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Library of Congress

Of the many blogs I read on a daily basis (thank you, RSS aggregators of the world!), there are a few that I enjoy above and beyond the rest. Posts in these blogs may be infrequent (ahem, Zeldman) or outside my area of expertise, but there’s just something about the way the blogger connects with the audience (i.e., me) that I really appreciate.

One of these blogs is Dorothea Salo’s Caveat Lector. While she occasionally posts a screed that flys directly over my head, the vast majority of her writing on markup, graduate school, library science, and the like is wonderfully accessible.

Today, she’s touched on one of my favorite library-related topics: the Library of Congress Subject Headings. I first ran across them (and the LoC classification scheme) as an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill, and ever since then I’ve been completely taken with it. To get some idea of why it’s so fun, take a look at the CavLev post linked above - c’mon, anything that includes subject headings for “gnomes” and “outdoor living spaces — decorations” has got to rock despite its (obvious) flaws, doesn’t it?