Hi, all lactnetters! I forwarded a recent post about "breast-feeding" vs
"breast feeding" vs "breastfeeding" & the Library of Congress to a librarian
friend of mine, and I thought that you all might be interested in her reply:

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Lisa Marasco, BA, LLLL, IBCLC
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: Re: word usage (fwd)

It is true!!
Dictionaries merely make official what has already been happening in the
living language for awhile.  I personally use the current spelling in
journals of my field--e.g. CD-ROM, online, etc.  If I try to use a
general English dictionary as the arbiter, I am often disappointed.

The Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings are even more conservative (by
far) than regular dictionaries.  It's only been maybe in the last 10 or
15 years that they finally changed "aeroplanes" to "airplanes".  They are
much better at changing nomenclature than they used to be, but still
quite conservative.  When the LC sneezes, all the other libraries using
their subject headings have to blow their collective noses.  So the LC
doesn't want to change spellings too quickly.  You'll probably have to
put up with breast-feeding for a few more years.  (It's very important to
know what the correct LC term is for stuff, because it is a standard used
by most American libraries and many foreign ones.)