It all started here, at the Library Congress in Washington, D.C., in 1898. After moving from the Capital to its new building, the Library needed a system for storing and retrieving its books. Alas, the Library of Congress Subject Headings or LCSH was born. Necessity is the mother of invention so the saying goes and the LC system of alphabetical subject headings would expand and eventually influence almost every library in the United States.(Along with the Dewey Decimal System) LCHS is still in use today, more than 110 years later. It has withstood the test of time, technology and modern culture. Obviously, it's a system that works, but it's not without its quirks. Many people and many, many, ok, countless hours of meetings have produced a dictionary of Subject Headings that uses words that just don't make sense to the men and women using libraries and, quite frankly, to a lot of the people working in them. One of the best examples of this is the word "Cookery". The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines Cookery as: the art or practice of cooking, so the use of the word directing people to books on cooking, including cookbooks, was technically correct. But how many people use this arcane word except in the occasional reference to a place, i.e. the cookery at a lumber camp? We don't go to a library and ask the friendly helpful staff "can you please help me find the books on cookery?" So, for years, when people have come to us in frustration because they can't find many books on cooking we've had to say to them with a straight face "you need to look under Cookery". You can imagine the looks we've received through the years.

Well, people, I have great news for you. On September 18, 2009 the ABA Policy and Standards Division for the Library of Congress announced the intention to modernize the subject headings for cooking and cookbooks. After issuing an open call for comment (yes, this was a lengthy process, just like any good bureaucratic process is) and further "discussion papers" were produced it was decided the term "cooking" will replace "cookery". It was also decided that "Cookbooks" would be used as a subject heading as well. (Previous to this if you searched using the word "cookbook" you were instructed to  "see Cookery") At this point, I'm reminded of the line Dave Barry always used in his weekly newspaper columns "I am not making this up". I can tell you that those of us in the front lines at libraries are ecstatic with this latest development. When it was announced at a recent meeting I attended it was met with enthusiastic applause. I'm sure most cataloging librarians are happy with the updates too. So, for all of you cooking enthusiasts out there (and there are a lot of you) get to your local library and start searching the online catalog for all those cookbooks and other books and movies on cooking that you may have missed.

If you perceive a certain amount of sarcasm in this post, your perceptions are correct. But having written all this, I will leave you with this. Some of my good friends are catalogers. I admire them for their work because in the end we do need some sort of system to keep all the books, movies, games, magazines and anything else we have for the public good organized. Catalogers are the ones who do all of this behind the scenes work. They make my job so much easier and for that reason I'm crazy about all of them.