Fred Bauder wrote:
At 04:35 PM 8/31/02 +0200, Axel wrote:
As time goes on, and more and more books are printed with their LC numbers, that code would end up coming out as even better.
Isn't it true that every book in the Library of Congress, i.e. pretty much every book in the English language, has an LC number, even if it isn't printed inside the book? If so, then LC numbers are close to ideal book identifiers.
Use of Library of Congress numbers is complicated by several things: one is the use by many libraries of the Dewey Decimal System; the other is the ease of use of the ISBN number and its entrenched position on the internet.
The LC Classification does have many benefits, but it remains a subject based listing, and as such involves a great deal of subjectivity. Would a book of the correspondence between an American and a French novellist, for example, be included in the PQ or the PS class? An author with multiple interests would have his works all over the place. What's more some libraries are free to deviate from LC to meet the needs of their own particular conventions.
The author/title approach probably remains the best basis. Eclecticology