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Collection Policy Statement Index
(Subclass T and selected portions of Z)
Contents:
I. Scope
II. Research strengths
III. General policy and collecting intensity levels
I. Scope
This section of the Collections Policy Statement on Science and Technology covers the subclass T (Technology, General) and the portion of class Z relating to useful arts and applied science; Technology, with the exception of the sections in both classes that concern the history of technology. The Library's collections in this class encompass nearly 35,000 titles.
II. Research Strengths
- General
The Library's holdings in general technology are strong, as befits the national library of a country that has been known for technological accomplishments since colonial days.Our holdings of dictionaries and encyclopedias (T9) are also noteworthy, with bilingual and multilingual technical dictionaries offering coverage of many languages over long periods. Included are not only English to foreign dictionaries but dictionaries relating two or more foreign languages to each other.
Books and journals on standardization in T58.8 are complemented by the holdings of the national standards issued by the American National Standards Institute and the corresponding bodies of other major industrial nations, held in the Technical Reports Section of the Science and Technology Division.
The collections on technical education (T61-T173) are also worthy of mention, with course catalogs, yearbooks, alumni directories, and histories of the best known schools and institutes of technology in the United States and abroad, as well as a number of U.S. and foreign journals on the study and teaching of technological subjects.
With the existence in the D.C. area of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the availability of an online computer system provided by that office to patent depository libraries, it is not necessary for the Library of Congress to collect patents. However, in the range T201-T342, the Library has long runs of the U.S. Patents Quarterly and the Official Gazette, and Specifications and Drawings covering the years 1871-1912, as well as patent and trademark journals from Canada, Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and the USSR/Russia, to name but a few. For a further discussion of the policies of the Library of Congress for patents, refer to the collections policy statement on patents.
- Areas of distinction
Holdings of 19th-century technological journals are particularly remarkable: there are long runs of such important titles as Iron Age, Scientific American, the Franklin Institute Journal, Popular Mechanics, the London Journal of Arts, and English Mechanic. The Library's holdings of material on exhibitions and world's fairs (T391-T995) are admirable in quantity and variety.
III. General policy and collecting intensity levels
The Library collects materials in general technology chiefly at the comprehensive level (collecting intensity 5), with the exception of technical education and technical schools (level 3), and patents and trademarks and mechanical drawings (both at level 4).
| Class | Subject | Intensity | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| T1-T6 | Periodicals and societies | 5 | |
| T9 | Dictionaries and encyclopedias | 5 | |
| T10.5-T11.8 | Communications of technical information | 5 | |
| T15-T33 | History | 5 | |
| T44-T51 | General works | 5 | |
| T55 | Industrial safety | 5 | |
| T55.4-T60.8 | Industrial engineering | 5 | |
| T61-T173 | Technical education, technical schools | 3 | |
| T173.2-T174.5 | Technological change, technology transfer | 5 | |
| T175-T178 | Industrial research | 5 | |
| T201-T342 | Patents, trademarks | 4 | Included here are materials with patents as the subject. Does not include patents themselves. |
| T351-T385 | Mechanical drawings | 4 | Computer graphics 5 |
| T391-T995 | Exhibitions, world's fairs | 5 |
