COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019)

Guest post by Julianne Beall

We hope you are not yet trying to classify books about COVID-19! Why? Because we are not yet sure where to recommend that you class them.

Remember SARS? When we indexed "Severe acute respiratory syndrome—medicine" to 616.2 Diseases of respiratory system, we were following MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). The MeSH heading Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has Respiratory Tract Infections as the immediate broader term in the MeSH tree structure.

MeSH has not established a heading for COVID-19, but it has established a MeSH Supplementary Concept record. COVID-19 is mapped to Pneumonia, Viral. If the heading, when it is established, has Pneumonia, Viral as the immediate broader heading, we will index COVID-19 (Disease)—medicine to 616.241 Pneumonia.

The 616 number can be added at various places in the 610s and elsewhere, e.g., interdisciplinary number and social services number for respiratory tract diseases 362.1962, interdisciplinary number and social services number for pneumonia 362.196241; incidence of and public measures to prevent respiratory tract diseases 614.592, incidence of and public measures to prevent pneumonia 614.59241.

Stay tuned!

Comments

[Carolyn Turner Dixon]

Thanks for the update.