Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms

"This vocabulary will be used to describe the creators of, and contributors to, resources, and also the intended audience of resources. It will be created and maintained by the Policy and Standards Division, and be distinct from the other vocabularies that are maintained by that division: Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), and the Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT). (...) The development of LCDGT is necessitated by two circumstances: the genre/form project and the growing popularity of faceted displays and searching.

The genre/form project formed the original impetus for creating a demographic terms vocabulary. Some LC subject headings—most notably the form headings for literature—include demographic information (e.g., Children’s stories, American, in which stories is the form, children are the audience demographic, and American, the creator demographic). The use of LCSH form headings for works of literature will be phased out as LC genre/form terms for literature are implemented, necessitating another method for bringing out the audience and creator/contributor information. (LCSH form headings will still be assigned to works about literature.

New discovery interfaces also make a new vocabulary desirable. Subject headings such as Children’s stories, American are assigned to works about American children’s stories, and also to works that are American children’s stories, so the computer cannot distinguish between the two types of works. LCGFT began to ameliorate this situation by allowing for a genre/form search, separate from a subject search. Users often want to know, though, what works a library has by a particular group (e.g., novels by lawyers), or for a particular group (e.g., handbooks for nurses). The demographic term vocabulary will fill the latter need. Together, LCSH, LCGFT, LCMPT, and LCDGT will allow for much more precision and flexibility in searching because terms within and across vocabularies can be mixed and matched to attain the level of specificity required."