Exploring the Potential of a Virtual Undergraduate Library Collection Based on the Hierarchical Interface to LC Classification

Abstract

The Hierarchical Interface to Library of Congress Classification (HILCC) is a system developed by the Columbia University Library to leverage call number data from the MARC holdings records in Columbia’s online catalog to create a structured, hierarchical menuing system that provides subject access to the library’s electronic resources. In this paper, the authors describe a research initiative at the Cornell University Library to discover if the Columbia HILCC scheme can be used as developed or in modified form to create a virtual undergraduate print collection outside the context of the traditional online catalog. Their results indicate that, with certain adjustments, an HILCC model can indeed, be used to represent the holdings of a large research library’s undergraduate collection of approximately 150,000 titles, but that such a model is not infinitely scalable and may require a new approach to browsing such a large information space.