Chinese Library Classification

Chinese Library Classification (CLC) is currently widely used in almost all of the libraries of primary and secondary schools, academic institutions, colleges, universities as well as public libraries throughout the Mainland China, the People Republic of China. In 1999, CLC was revised and updated to the fouth edition which is primarily published not only for the libraries in China but also for the book publishment industry in China. Since 1999 after its official standardisation, nowaday all books published in China are classified using CLC alongside with the well known ISBN codification. CLC is a system which is quite different from the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) or the Library Congress Classification System. Unlike the 10 main divisions of DDC, CLC has 22 key classes which are designed to suit the needs of China who has few thousands years of historical and cultural backgrounds. In addition, substantial portions of the key classes and sub-classes have been included to contain the subjects to reflect the recent rapid changes of the economical, industrial and technological fields in the contemporary China. The total quantities of classfied subjects of CLC are approximately 43600 entries. The 22 key classes of CLC translated into English are listed as follows:

A Marxism, Leninism, Maoism & Deng Xiaoping Theory B Philosophy and Religion C Social Science D Politics and Law E Military Science F Economics G Culture, Science, Education and Sports H Languages and Linguistics I Literature J Art K History and Geography N Natural Science O Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry P Astronomy and Geoscience Q Bioscience R Medicine and Hygiene S Agricultural Science T Industrial Technology U Transportation V Aviation and Areospace X Environmental Science Z General, Miscellaneous, Auxillary and Others