The Policy and Standards Division (PSD) has approved approximately 400 terms for Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT). PSD thanks everyone who made comments for improvement of the terms and guiding principles. As a result of the comments, numerous revisions to the vocabulary were made.
For the next stage of development, PSD policy specialists will make proposals to enhance the scope and coverage of the vocabulary, with a goal of approving the proposals before the end of 2015. Proposals from LC catalogers and catalogers in SACO institutions are not being accepted at this time.
PSD continues to recommend that libraries wait until the second phase of development is completed before widely implementing LCDGT in cataloging; the vocabulary is not yet robust enough to support general use. Libraries that choose to implement immediately do so at their own risk.
Classification Web subscribers may view the approved demographic group terms by clicking on the “Search Demographic Group Terms” option on the main menu.
There are two free services for downloading LCDGT authority records. The website http://classificationweb.net/LCDGT/ provides records in MARC UTF-8 format, while records may be downloaded in a variety of formats from LC’s Linked Data Service, http://id.loc.gov. LCDGT authority records are not included in the MARC Distribution Service.
Questions or comments may be sent to Janis L. Young at [email protected].
