Newsflash! Subject Headings not boring!
Cataloguing… just try dropping that word in a conversation and watch people’s eyes glaze over with boredom, or even worse, complete and utter indifference. But just because John Q. Public may not appreciate the beauty of Library of Congress Subject Headings doesn’t mean we should fret too much. After all, if no one is watching the librarians we can do whatever we want.
Although the vast majority of headings in the LCSH are painfully boring and uniform, clearly someone at the Library of Congress with a sense of humor is taking advantage of the fact that no one is watching... hence this list of weird and wacky subject headings submitted by the students of the McGill Graduate School of Library and Information Studies and friends.
- Air guitar (May Subd Geog)
- Amicable numbers
- Aquarium libraries
- Bats--War use
- Beast marriage
- Beavers on postage stamps
- Betrayal (May Subd Geog)
Boating with cats (May Subd Geog) - Bobo (Dog)
- Boating with dogs (May Subd Geog)
- Boring--Addresses, essays, lectures
- Boring--Mathematical models
- Boring--Periodicals
- Burnt tuna syndrome
- Buttocks exercises (May Subd Geog)
- Camping with dogs
- Captive lizards
- Canned meat--Poetry
- Cattle--Psychic aspects
- Christian saints--Mothers
- Church work with cowgirls
- Clowns--Religious aspects--Christianity
- Cockroaches--Literary collections
- Codependency--Religious aspects
- Coitus interruptus--Complications
- Communication in fisheries
- Cookery (Alligators)
- Coutu, Jean
- Coolidge, Calvin (1872-1933) --Wit and humor
- Dancing on postage stamps
- Dangerous birds
- Damp gardens
- Death in bookplates
- Discouraged workers
- Domestic ass owners
- Donkeys in numismatics
- Dust explosions--Minnesota
- Drooling (May Subd Geog)
- Drunkenness (Philosophy)
- Ear--Muscles
- Eggs as food
- Eggs--Religious aspects
- Emu farming
- Ethics in politics--Folklore
- Extrasensory perception in animals
- Fat dormouse (See Edible dormouse)
- Feces--Folklore
- Feet in the Bible
- Fetus Fiction
- Fishes--Aging
- Flatulence (May Subd Geog)
- Folk dentistry
- Fortune telling by moles
- Frogs and toads in literature
- French toast (May Subd Geog)
- Funny cars
- Garbage can models of decision making
- Gifts causa mortis
- Golf--Religious aspects--Buddhism
- Grudges (fishes)
- Head banging
- Hesitation (May Subd Geog)
- Hilton, Paris (1981- ) -- Addresses, essays, lectures
- Hockey for older people
- Homing pigeons in the bible
- Horror in music
- Hot pepper sauce industry
- Human beings--Effect of Saturn on
- Imaginary places in mass media
- Labor rest homes
- Landslides--Law and legislation
- Laudatory poetry--Luba-Lulua
- Liposculpture
- Litterateurs in literature
- Luminous blue variables
- Malingerers
Marijuana -- Cookery - Matrimony (Imaginary place)
- Methodists on postage stamps
- Mom (Fictitious character)
- Monsters in dreams
- Mosquito language
- Mr.t (Egyptian deity)
- Mud lumps
- Multiple personality (May Subd Geog)
- Mundane astrology
- Naked singularities (Cosmology)
- Names carved on trees
- National Digestive Disease Awareness Month
- Narcissistic injuries
- Nose--Parasites
- Nude mouse
- Odor control--Minnesota
- Parapsychology and business
- Parties for dogs
- Penguins--Fossils
- Perforations (Philately)
- Postmortem photography
- Potatoes--Social aspects
- Potpies (May Subd Geog)
- Poultry--Dubbing
- Plebeian postmodernism
- Praying mantises as pets
- Regret (May Subd Geog)
- Road kills (May Subd Geog)
- Saliva language
- Seduction (Byzantine law)
- Self-control in adolescence
- Self esteem--Religious aspects
- Self-induced vibration
- Sex customs--Communist countries
- Sexual headache
- Slugs (Mollusks) as pets
- Space shuttle toilets
- Spam (Trademark)--Poetry
- Spontaneous combustion--Periodicals
- Spooning (Hugging)
- Stick insects as pets
- Stiff-man syndrome
- Stone-boiling--Cross-cultural studies
- Stunt nematodes
- Success--Psychic aspects
- Tall people (May Subd Geog)
- Television in birth control
- Time immemorial (Law)
- Toilet paraphernalia, Prehistoric
- Tour bus parking
- Truth maintenance systems
- Ugly contests
- Upside-down books
- Union with Christ
- Unrequited love
- Urine dance
- Used helicopters
- Virtual reality in management
- Visits of state on postage stamps
- Whiskey--Anecdotes
- White sucker
- World War, 1939-1945, in bookplates
- Zombies--Juvenile literature
- Defecation--Handbooks, manuals, etc.
- Hand--Surgery--Juvenile literature.
- Body snatching--Juvenile literature
- Canons, fugues, etc. (Accordion ensemble)
- Boredom--Songs and music
Also, it's interesting to note some of the subheadings and number of records at http://authorities.loc.gov for: Bush, George W. (George Walker), 1946-
--Military leadership (4 records)
--Poetry (1 record)
--Public appearances (2 records)
--Public opinion (2 records)
--Ethics (16 records)
--Juvenile literature (25 records! hmm)
- Cookery (Earthworms)
LIst originally appeared in Marginal Librarian, http://www.gslis.mcgill.ca/marginal/.
Maintained by Beth Dunning (beth.dunning@mail.mcgill.ca)