Metcalf, Keyes D.

IDEALS @ Illinois

The New Medical Classification for the Library of Congress and the Army Medical Library—
A Progress Report

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository

always come with years to institutions any useful service to the institutions themselves more than it does to men. Yet the value of and to historians of our cultural life.—Julian his essay is great and he has performed a P. Boyd. T h e N e w Medical Classification for the Library of Congress and the A r m y Medical L i b r a r y — A Progress Report A t the meeting of the Army Medical Li-brary consultants in October 1944, Mary Louise Marshall reported (in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 33: 180-82, 1945) the initial steps which had been taken toward producing a system of classification suitable for the Army Medical Library. Working under the auspices of a committee representing this library, the Li-brary of Congress, and the Army Medical Library Survey Committee, and with the counsel of physicians concerned with the various specialties of medicine, she had made the preliminary studies for new alternative schedules for Medicine, Class R, and for the preclinical sciences in Class Q for the Library of Congress system. Since that time Miss Marshall has been hard at work putting the results of this study into effect. The schedule for each subject division has been drawn up and submitted for advice and correction to medi-cal specialists and to members of the committee on classification. As may be imagined, this has proved a long process. The first draft of the whole is finished, and the Army Medical Library has begun to classify its collection by it. In the actual application of the schedules, it is expected that alterations, additions, and sub-tractions will be found necessary. Conse-quently, until such trial has been thoroughly made, it is judged wise not to make the provisional first draft of the classification available for general distribution. The process of classifying the Army Medical Li-brary collection should result in establishing the system in permanent form. It will then be possible to publish it as an integral part of the Library of Congress classification schedules. It should be noted that the notation for these new schedules has been planned so that it will not conflict with the use of those in the original Library of Congress scheme for Class Q and Class R. The material from these classes has been assigned to hitherto unused portions of the alphabet, the new Q divisions occupying QS to Q Z , while Medicine proper (the former R sections) utilizes the wholly vacant letter W . This will make it possible for libraries already using the present Library of Congress classification for medicine and related sci-ences to continue to do so or, if they prefer, to apply the new system, leaving their previ-ous collections as they are. T h e Library of Congress will announce its policy with respect to use of the new schedules before they are published. KEYES D . METCALF, Chairman Committee on a New Medical Classification for the Library of Congress and the Army Medical Library 288 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES 

The New Medical Classification for the Library of Congress and the Army Medical Library—
A Progress Report

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/35479/crl_07_03_288_opt.pdf?sequence=2

The New Medical Classification for the Library of Congress and the Army Medical Library— A Progress Report

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

IDEALS @ Illinois

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository