Library of Congress Based Classification
The Library of Congress Classification system assigned to the Bahá'í Faith a range of numbers at BP300-395. The numbers assigned to the Bahá'í Faith in the Library of Congress scheme were not adequate. The staff of the Bahá'í World Centre Library therefore developed an expanded classification for the Bahá'í Faith based on BP300-395. The Bahá'í World Centre Library retained the rough outline of the Library of Congress organization, causing only a small amount of disturbance to the original arrangement of numbers by the Library of Congress. The Bahá'í World Centre Library decided, after testing, to adopt the Library of Congress Classification as the general classification scheme for the Library, and to maintain a special expanded Bahá'í World Centre version of the section on the Bahá'í Faith, using the number BP300-399.
In recent years, the Bahá'í World Centre decided not to maintain this special classification and now accepts the numbers assigned by the Library of Congress.
William Collins was for several years the Recommending Officer for Bahá'í materials at the Library of Congress and remains vigilant in sending corrections to errors in cataloguing and classification of Bahá'í items. Users of Library of Congress cataloguing records should be aware that errors occur.