BIC Subject Categories and Qualifiers

This is BIC’s Subject Categories and Qualifiers Scheme, version 2.1 released November 2010, the standard classification scheme for the UK book trade and some other English language markets, available from www.bic.org.uk.

Note that BIC has announced that there will be no further development of the BIC scheme, and that Thema is its preferred subject scheme for current and future use. Browse the latest version of the Thema international, multilingual subject category scheme here.

Code	Description
U	Computing and information technology…
UM	Computer programming / software development…
UMA	Program concepts / learning to program
UMB	Algorithms and data structures
UMC	Compilers
UMF	Agile programming
UMG	Aspect programming / AOP
UMH	Extreme programming
UMJ	Functional programming Note: languages used include Lisp, Matlab, Haskell, XSLT, Scheme, Maple, etc	✽
UMK	Games development and programming… See also: UGG “Computer games design and applications”. Languages used include C++, Cg, Java, Lua, UnrealScript, etc	✽
UML	Graphics programming Class here: Raster graphics, vector graphics, ActionScript, animation and rendering languages	✽
UMN	Object-oriented programming (OOP) Note: languages used include C++, C#, Java, Perl, Cobol, Visual Basic, etc	✽
UMP	Microsoft programming…
UMQ	Macintosh programming Note: languages used include Objective C, Java, Cocoa, Carbon etc	✽
UMR	Network programming Class here: IPC, RPC	✽
UMS	Mobile and handheld device programming / Apps programming Class here: iOS, Android, OPL, etc programming	✽
UMT	Database programming Note: languages used include SQL, PL/SQL, MDX, etc. See also: UN “Databases” and following	✽
UMW	Web programming… Note: languages used include Ajax; ASP; Awk; CGI; Coldfusion; CSS; Enterprise Service Bus (ESB); Flash; Flex; HTML; Java Server Pages; JavaScript; LAMP (Linux, Apache, PHP or Python or Perl, and MySQL); Mozilla; Perl; PHP; Python; Rails; Ruby; Sed; SGML; VBscript; Visual Web developer; xHTML, etc	✽
UMX	Programming and scripting languages: general Class here general works on specific languages where the purpose, such as Web programming or object-oriented programming, is not defined	✽
UMZ	Software Engineering…

An ellipsis indicates a category has more detailed subcategories
Click on a category description to reveal these ‘descendant’ subcategories
Indentation indicates the ancestors and descendants of a category
Click the ✽ to see or hide the usage notes
Search for categories (eg ‘celebrity’) using the search field at the top
- Searches are not case-sensitive
- You don’t need to use complete words (eg ‘celeb’)
- Multi-word searches return categories matching any of the individual words
- To search for all the individual words, use + instead of space (eg ‘art+history’)
- To search for an exact phrase, use underline instead of space (eg ‘women’s_health’)
Click on a search result category to see it ‘in context’ with its ancestor and descendant categories
A blank search returns you to the top level of the hierarchy
Read the latest BIC Subject Categories and Qualifiers Usage Guidelines (pdf, revised December 2010)

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