Beth Geesey Holmes is joining me as co-editor of the column. You will start to see her name on the columns soon.

By now, you should all have subscribed to LC's Classification Web. If you have not, please check http://www.loc.gov/cds/classweb.html for information about subscribing. It is pretty easy to use but do read the tutorial and the user group information. Do subscribe to the listserv.

It is so nice to type in KF9219 and go to the class number with the forms that correspond to that number. An outline of the schedules has been added to the product and the subject heading/classification correlation section can be helpful. Also the product contains the draft (emphasize draft) schedules for KB, KBM and KBP.

Last spring I had a question about using K4602-K4603 Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (The GATT Parties). World Trade Organization. The arrangement is:

K4602    Serials
K4602.2  Monographs.  By date
K4603    First and subsequent conferences (sessions).
         By date of conference
		       Under each:
         .A24A-Z  Proceedings and reports. By title
         .A27A-Z  Other documents (announcements,
                  preliminary papers, reports of dele-
                  gates, etc.). By country or agency
         .A3      Final acts, conclusions,  resolutions.
                  By date
         .A35A-Z  Works on the conference
         .A4-.Z   Treaties and other international
                   agreements
         .A4-.A44 Texts
         .A4      Unannotated editions.  By date
                   Including official editions, with
                   or without annotations
         .A44A-Z  Annotated editions. Commentaries
         .A46A-Z  Related agreements (accessions,
                   amendments, protocols, etc.)
         .A6-.Z   Works on the agreement

K4602 and K4602.2 are for works — serials and monographs — about 2 or more of the sessions. Looking at the Library of Congress catalog you will see most of these are general works about the GATT and they should be works about 2 or more of the individual conferences.

K4603 is subdivided by date of conference. However, it is not so easy to find the dates of the conferences or rounds. Originally I used dates that I found in one of the encyclopedias. Later I found a website with the dates: http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/ites/0200/ijee/chronology.htm. Some of the authority records have dates in them, i.e.Tokyo Round|d(1973-1979); Uruguay Round|d(1987-1994); Kennedy Round|d1964-1967 :|cGeneva, Switzerland). We are probably all familiar with the Uruguay Round (K4603 1987). These various sources – encyclopedias, web sites and authority records — do not always agree on the beginning date of the rounds. Dillon Round is listed as starting in 1960 or 1961 depending on the source. The first round was probably 1947, 2nd Amnecy 1949, 3rd Geneva 1956, 4th Dillon 1960 or 1961, etc. I did find that LC catalog has used 1960 for the Dillon Round works. You will find various dates and practices regarding K4603 in LC and other catalogs. You must remember that K4603 has to be divided by date first and later by the form table listed in the schedule. During the 1970's and 1980's the LC practice was to use the date that corresponded to the beginning date of the round after the number K4603. Thus a typical K4603 number would look like this: K4603 1987.A35|bU78 1995.

Will this hold true for the future? I am not sure. Will the World Trade Organization hold rounds or will we change the forms? Looking at some of the records with dates after 1987, I can see titles that would have been better with 1987 Uruguay Round.

On another note, sometimes we forget that certain numbers exist. This is just a reminder that the KF American state tables have specific numbers for court reports. Search KFN5045 and you will find a list of call numbers for New York court report titles.