Music Classification Systems

This volume is designed to introduce the principles of music classification to beginning music cataloguers, as well as to non-specialist cataloguers and others who deal with music materials only occasionally.

The book's purpose is to relieve the stress level for general cataloguers with no special background or knowledge of music by providing some practical guidelines in the classification of music materials and to clarify and explain the most commonly used classification systems in the United States: the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC); the Library of Congress Classification (LCC); and the Alpha-Numeric System for Classification of Recordings (ANSCR).

The manual also presents a general historical overview of music classification, from early attempts at organizing specific collections, to the effort of Oscar Sonneck and others to adapt fundamental principles of classification to the distinctive characteristics of music materials, while at the same time addressing the special needs of the users of those materials. Presenting a number of illustrative examples, the manual combines theoretical principles with practical "how-to" advice, written in a "user-friendly" way by a practising music cataloguer.