Cataloging Policy Documentation
Contents

Introduction
Cataloging policy documentation produced and maintained by the Library of Congress is available for searching in Classification Web, all in one place. While this documentation is freely available on the Library’s website, it isn’t easily searchable. As Classification Web is updated nightly, Library documentation will always be up-to-date. Catalogers and other library professionals can now access these indispensable reference materials knowing they are using the most up-to-date resources.

Documentation Included
Classification and Shelflisting Manual (CSM): A manual on the application of the Library of Congress classification in specific cataloging situations, with guidelines for formulating the classification portion of the LC call number and guidelines for formulating the unique book number portion of the call number.

Cooperative Online Serials (CONSER) Program Documentation

Descriptive Cataloging Manual (DCM): The Library of Congress Descriptive Cataloging Manual (DCM) contains local cataloging policy and practices for Library of Congress (LC) staff generally, and LC/NACO policies for name and series authority records (DCM section Z1). DCM Z1 was last printed as a cumulation in 2005 and is out of print.

Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies

Manuals for the Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies

MARC Documentation for a variety of formats: Guides for the MARC 21 formats, which are standards for the representation and communication of bibliographic and related information in machine-readable form.

Moving Image Genre-form Guide: Guide to categorize film and television works into readily understood classifications.

Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC) Documentation

Resource Description & Access (RDA) Metadata Guidance Documentation (MGDs): Lengthier portions of the LCC-PCC RDA Original Toolkit Policy Statements, as well as the examples, included as a separate set of Official RDA Toolkit documentation.

ALA-LC Romanization Tables

Subject Headings Manual (SHM): Manual of procedures and practices to be followed by Library of Congress catalogers, as well as substantive explanations of subject cataloging policy.

Summaries of Decisions from Subject Editorial Meetings (2005-present): Weekly (until 2011) meeting summaries from the Library of Congress subject policy specialists on subject policy practice.

Cataloging Service Bulletin (1978-2010): A quarterly bulletin that included current, new, and revised information about the library's cataloging and classification practices and policies.

CONSERline (1994-2007): News of the CONSER Program and serials cataloging issues.

Menu Access
Access to the Cataloging Policy Documention is available from two locations: the drop-down navigation menu on the upper-left corner of every page and near the bottom of the ClassWeb Plus main menu. Here is the main menu showing both methods:

Documentation Menu
The Cataloging Policy Documention is organized into different databases and within each database, a list of facets. Individual policy documents are placed in the appropriate facet. Some documents have been added to more than one facet or database, as appropriate. To search a database or facet, click on its link.

The Cataloging Policy Documention menu looks like this:

List of document databases
Use this drop-down list to jump to one of the databases further down on the menu.

Document database
Click on a document database if you want to search all of its facets.

Facets
Click on a facet to limit your search to one facet of a document database.

List of documents
Click on the icon to the left of any facet to display the list of documents included in that facet. In the following example, the icon to the left of Romanization Landscape and Guidelines has been clicked. Click the icon a second time to hide the list of documents. Click on the document name to open the document in a separate tab.

Documentation Search Page
The search page looks similar for all document databases. In the following examples, the Classification & Shelflisting Manual (CSM) database was selected. That screen looks like this:

Search term
Input your search term here.

Clear search term
Click on the X to clear the search box.

Run search
Press ENTER or click on the magnifying glass icon to run your search.

Facet
Use this drop-down list to select a facet. The first item in the list selects all facets in the current document database. This item is labelled differently in each database. The drop-down list for CSM looks like this:

Previous page
Click on this icon to display the previous page of search results (once you have run a search).

Next page
Click on this icon to display the next page of search results (once you have run a search).

Running a Search
All documentation searches are keyword based. Input your search term in the Find... field and press Enter (or click on the magnifying glass icon). Here is an example of searching for the term book:

The first line of the results page includes a summary of the number of documents that match the search term, the facets in which they are found, and the range of item numbers on this page. Each facet in this list shows the number of documents in this facet that match the current search term. You can narrow your search to a single facet by clicking on these links. You can also change the current facet using the drop-down list to the right of the search term and then rerun your search.

Up to ten matching documents are returned at one time. Use the Previous page and Next page icons to move back and forth through the results when there are more than ten.

The remainder of the page displays the title of each document, its facet in parentheses, and up to four samples of matching text with the search terms displayed in bold. To open a matching document in a separate browser tab, click on its title.

In the following example, the search for book was narrowed by clicking on the Shelflisting - LC-Specific Information link near the top of the page which shows nine matching documents in parentheses:

In the following example, using the Chrome browser, a matching document is retrieved in a separate tab by clicking on the G 810 Rare Materials (Shelflisting - LC-Specific Information) link:

The same document as seen in the Firefox browser:

Note: All catagloging policy documents indexed by this system are either HTML or PDF files. Depending on your browser settings, when you retrieve a PDF file, you may be prompted to save the PDF file on your computer. If this is the case and you would prefer to view the PDF file in your browser, you can change your browser settings to display PDF files directly in the browser. Here are the instructions for the Chrome and Firefox browsers:

Chrome
  1. Navigate to Settings > Privacy and security > Site settings > Additional content settings > PDF documents.
  2. Select the option "Open PDF in Chrome".
Firefox
  1. Navigate to Settings > General.
  2. Scroll down to Applications and find Portable Document Format (PDF) in the list.
  3. Click on the Action item to the right of PDF and select the option "Open in Firefox".

Wildcard Characters
The documentation search system uses Apache Solr to index document content and run queries. If you have used this product before, you may be familiar with its query specifiers. The most basic examples are listed here. For more details, read the Solr guide to Specifying Terms for the Standard Query Parser. Note that you cannot specify Solr field names (which are followed by a colon) when using ClassWeb Plus. Only the keyword access point is supported.

The most common search specifiers are:

Note:To see a list of all documents indexed within a particular database or facet, search for * (asterisk).

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