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