Approximately 5,000 new headings, including headings with subdivisions, are added to LCSH each year. The creation and revision of subject headings is a continuous process. There are 764 general USE references, 4,351 general see also references, 299,751 references from one usable heading to another, and 362,646 references from unused terms to used headings. The subject authority database from which the headings in this edition were drawn indicates that the file contains approximately 24,390 personal name headings of which 23,272 represent family names, 10,034 corporate headings, 6 meeting or conference headings, 481 uniform titles, 242,511 topical subject headings, and 61,885 geographic subject headings. LCSH is also used as indexing vocabulary in a number of published bibliographies. The administrative and managerial machinery of LC has made it possible for LCSH to stand out as an undisputed leader. The strongest aspect of LCSH is that it represents subject headings of the Library of Congress, the national library of the United States, one of the richest of national libraries of the world. It is the model for many other vocabularies in English and other languages and has been translated into numerous languages. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is the most widely used subject vocabulary in the world. It also includes headings for geographic features, ethnic groups, historical events, building names, etc. LCSH is a multidisciplinary vocabulary that includes headings in all subjects, from science to religion, to history, social science, education, literature, and philosophy. LCSH has been used in cataloging since 1898 at the Library of Congress in assigning subject headings to facilitate subject access to the resources in its library catalog. LCSH comprises the complete alphabetic list of terms to be used as controlled vocabulary for subject concepts by the catalogers of the Library of Congress and other libraries to provide such controlled subject access to surrogate records. It is not a true thesaurus, though, because for historical reasons it does not completely conform to the international standard on thesaurus construction. It also indicates relationships between and among headings. A single word or phrase is chosen to represent each concept that is included, and synonyms are provided as see-references to that heading. It is popularly known by its abbreviation as LCSH and is sometimes used interchangeably with the phrase subject authority file. LCSH is a controlled vocabulary. Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is the list of headings produced from the subject authority file maintained by the United States Library of Congress for use in bibliographic records.
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