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Genre Headings (LCGFT)

Genre Headings LCGFT

3 August 2011

See at end for multiple URLs for LCGFT of some genres. The complete list may be seen on ClassWeb. Narrower terms may be consulted under broad genre terms in LCSH:

*Catographic materials
*Law materials
*Motion pictures
*Television programs
*Video recordings

LC's Voyager is not yet equipped to handle LCGFT. There is no "Genre" search key, and they are identified in the last column of hit lists as "not applicable". You can locate them by searching Keword (All) in Authorities.

In 2007 the Library of Congress' Policy and Standards Division (PSD, then called the Cataloging Policy and Support Office, or CPSO) began to develop genre/form terms in the area of moving images. Since then
terms for recorded sound, cartography and law have also been included. Genre/form terms for music, and religion will be incorporated.

PSD's intent has been to develop a thesaurus distinct from Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), but until recently the authority records have been assigned MARC21 coding indicating that they are part
of LCSH. When the terms have been assigned in bibliographic records, they have been coded with second indicator "0" (zero), which is used for LCSH. They have also been assigned LCCNs with the same prefix as
subject headings, "sh." Additionally, approved genre/form terms have been published in the Supplementary Vocabularies volume of LCSH and instruction sheets governing their development and use have appeared in
the Subject Headings Manual (SHM).

PSD now to formally separates genre/form terms from LCSH, in both MARCrecords and in printed products. The details are outlined below.

*Title of thesaurus and MARC source code Since 2007 the genre/form headings have been referred to as a genre/form list or a genre/form thesaurus, because the thesaurus did not yet have a formal title. PSD
has now coined the title Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT). This title appeared in print for the first time in the Supplemental Vocabularies volume of the 32nd edition of LCSH.

On May 26, 2010 the Network Development and MARC Standards Office (NDMSO) announced that it has assigned the MARC source code "lcgft" to the thesaurus. For the NDMSO announcement see:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/relators/tn100526src.html

* MARC21 records Within a MARC21 authority record, the thesaurus to which the heading belongs, is through a combination of 008/11 and subfield $f of the 040 field.

Authority records for genre/form terms are coded as follows.

008/11: z ("Other")
040$f: lcgft

In bibliographic records, genre/form terms are always contained in the 655 field, coded by a combination of second indicator "7" and the source code in subfield $2. LC genre/form terms in bibliographic records are
coded:

655 -7 $a [Term]. $2 lcgft

This formula has been employed successfully for many other thesauri and lists of terms and PSD expects that its use for the LCGFT will be equally successful.

*Documentation A separate manual for genre/form terms is being written. It will include instructions and guidelines on proposing and applying LC genre/form headings, and will be formatted similar to the
way that the SHM is. (Until it is developed, instruction sheets for genre/form headings will continue to reside in the SHM.) PSD is also investigating the possibility of extracting LCGFT from Supplementary Vocabularies and publishing it separately.

LCGFT may now be viewed at https://id.loc.gov/

[Adapted from an LC announcement.]