By Lawrence I. Charterss (writing as Herr Kaiman)
LSA Open Stacks, Volume 23, Number 10, January 28, 1977, p. 2.
For thousands of years mankind has wondered if the moon was made of green cheese and, if so, where was the necessary cow. This question has now been answered (the cow is in the constellation Udder Major), leaving just one great mystery left confront ing the human race: is there logic to the Library of Congress Classification system?
While it would be tempting to give a simple and easy answer (such as “no”), circumstances make this impossible. Melvil Congress (1851-1931), inventor of the system, died without leaving any general explanation of his philosophy. It is assumed that there must have been some basic logic to the system, though only occasional examples of this are still evident: G for geography, M for music, T for technology, V (naval science) for wasser (pronounced “vasser”). The other letter codes are harder to figure out but, based on notes left by Congress after his death, the following key has been developed:
A (general): almost anything
B (philosophy / religion / psychology): boring
C (history – auxiliary): cretinous
D (history – general): dull
E – F (history – American): egocentric; farcical
H (social science): haughty
J (political science): jingoism
K (law): kickbacks
L (education): lunkhead
N (fine arts): nonsense
P (language arts): pedantic
Q (science): queer
R (medicine): ripoff
S (agriculture): [deleted]
U (military science): unhealthy
Z (bibliography & library science): onomatopoeic sound of sleeping – “zzzzzzz…”
Now that you understand the subject codes, you might wonder how the other number and letter codes are selected. Ouija boards are still used, much in the same manner as that outlined by the father of library science, Henrik der Bucherkenner (938-1002), many centuries ago. In the past hundred years playing cards (poker or bridge) have been adopted by many libraries (especially those concentrating in the A, J, K, and Q subject fields), and small libraries have developed an abbreviated form of this system through the use of pinochle decks. The social sciences and other dreamy fields still rely, of course, on tarot cards. Scrabble boards, and dice.
Naturally, in a field as complex as cataloging, several myths spring up and defy all efforts to quash them. One of the more popular items of misinformation is the belief that MARC (as in MARC tape) stands for MAchine Readable Cataloging. Actually, MARC stands for Mechanical Accelerated Random Coder — a device invented by the Library of Congress to speed the cataloging process. After a book is deposited in a MARC chute the machine shreds it, examines the remains and, using a computer-simulated roulette wheel / traffic light control box / IRS audit form/ weather service prediction table, produces complete cataloging almost instantaneously. Technicians are presently working on a sub-system which would re-assemble the shredded works, thus permitting rare items to be cataloged.
I hope that this brief introduction has helped rip away the shroud of ignorance which has covered LC cataloging methods. For more details, see my book: The Numbers Game: Marxist & Capitalist Views of Classification (New York: Default Press, 1976).