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. Read more »