The Classification of Music Moving Image Materials: Historical Perspectives, Problems, and Practical Solutions

For almost half a century, music librarians, media librarians, and professional associations have advocated classifying audiovisual materials using the same classification scheme that a library uses for print materials. Despite this strong advocacy, not all media materials have been classified. Music moving image materials have often received the same lack of subject classification access as sound recordings and other media resources. Libraries are now replacing their videocassette collections with DVDs and are presented with the opportunity to rectify this situation. A discussion of the advantages of including class numbers in the bibliographic records for music moving image materials will also demonstrate the applicability and advantages for video collections in general.