Islamic and Jewish law has, for years, been the orphan of the Library of Congress classification scheme. Left without a place of its own it has been either shoehorned into the religion schedules, or set aside in homegrown organizational schemes. In either case access to these materials was often compromised, and retrieval difficult.

Fortunately, LC, in its work on the law schedules, has finally been able to generate draft versions of KBM–Jewish Law, and KBP–Islamic Law. We are fortunate that someone of Jolande Goldberg's prodigious talent and incredible energy was assigned the task of developing both of these schedules. She has overcome numerous roadblocks, and found consensus where there seemed to be none. The new schedules, as you will see, are both elegant structures in themselves, as well as constructed in such a way as to be a powerful tool for comparative research.