The Adequacy of the Structure of the National Library of Medicine Classification Scheme for Organizing Pharmacy Literature

Abstract

The National Library of Medicine Classification (NLMC) scheme was developed in 1946, using basic ideas from earlier schemes developed for organizing resources in support of teaching medicine and widely used in the United States for classifying information resources including pharmacy and pharmaceutics. The purpose of this study is to examine how the structure of the NLMC accommodates pharmaceutical literature and assess its adequacy. The author analyzed the NLMC numbers assigned to 1,979 monographs with bibliographic records. The analysis revealed that the structure of the NLMC brought together 42% of the literature in the sub-class QV 701-835 while another 41% was scattered throughout the NLMC scheme. Additionally, 17% was classified elsewhere in the Library of Congress Classification (LCC).