The Chinese Library Classification (CLC; Chinese: 中国图书馆分类法), also known as Classification for Chinese Libraries (CCL),^[1] is effectively the national library classification scheme in China. It is used in almost all primary and secondary schools, universities, academic institutions, as well as public libraries. It is also used by publishers to classify all books published in China.

The Book Classification of Chinese Libraries (BCCL) was first published in 1975, under the auspices of China's Administrative Bureau of Cultural Affairs. Its fourth edition (1999) was renamed CLC. In September 2010, the fifth edition was published by National Library of China Publishing House. CLC has twenty-two top-level categories, and inherits a Marxist orientation from its earlier editions.^[2] (For instance, category A is Marxism, Leninism, Maoism & Deng Xiaoping Theory.) It contains a total of 43600 categories, many of which are recent additions, meeting the needs of a rapidly changing nation.^[3]

The CLC system

The 22 top categories and selected sub-categories of CLC (5th Edition) are as follows:

Other classifications

The other library classifications in China are:

• Library Classification of the People’s University of China (LCPUC)
• Library Classification of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (LCCAS)
• Library Classification for Medium and Small Libraries (MSL)
• Library Classification of Wuhan University (LCWU)

The other library classifications for Chinese materials outside mainland China are:

• Cambridge University Library Chinese Classification System Archived 2007-01-07 at the Wayback Machine, Classification Scheme for Chinese Books devised by Profs. Haloun and P. van der Loon for Cambridge University, UK.
• University of Leeds Classification of Books in Chinese, UK (36 pages of Catalog in PDF)
• Harvard-Yenching Classification System
• New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries (commonly used in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau)

See also

• Libraries in the People's Republic of China
• Ningbo Library

References

External links

• Official website
• Contemporary Classification Systems and Thesauri in China, Zhang Qiyu, Liu Xiangsheng, Wang Dongbo, 62nd IFLA General Conference - Conference Proceedings - August 25-31, 1996
• Chinese Library Classification Editorial Board
• Abridged third (obsolete) edition of CLC (in Chinese)
• CLC Online (in Chinese)
• Research on Interoperability of Metadata in Classification Schemes-construction of automatic mapping system between CLC and DDC, Jianbo Dai, Hanqing Hou, Ling Cao, Dept. of Libr. & Inform. Sci., Nanjing Agri. Univ., Nanjing, China 210095
• Construction of Knowledge Base for Automatic Indexing and Classification based on CLC, Hanqing Hou, Chunxiang Xue, Nanjing Agri. Univ., Nanjing, China 210095
• An Intelligent Retrieval System for Chinese Agricultural Literature indexed by Chinese Classification System, Ping Qian, Xiaolu Su, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China
• East Asian Library Classification Systems, archived
• The Development of Authority Database in National Library of China (NLC), March 2002, Beixin Sun of NLC NLC's classification subject thesaurus database based on CLC.
• National Bibliographies: the Chinese Experience, 72nd IFLA Conference at Seoul in Korea, August 2006, Ben Gu of NLC An overview of the current situation of the National Bibliography and classification systems in China.
• A month at the Shanghai Library, November 2004, Helen Michael, University of Toronto A librarian from Canada shared her experience of working in a library of China.