When did this happen?

[katster]

Here is today's amusement.

I get letters in my email from my local library about books that have come in for me. (I can also log into the online system and see them, so I knew the book was at the library already.) This is what it said:

Mon Nov 20 2006
It's waiting for you! Please pick up your item within ten days.

AUTHOR: Brooks, Max.
World War Z : an oral history of th
CALL NO: 818.602 BRO
BARCODE: 31740002337115

Well, of course, other than the "I got this because my friends (hi mrfnord!) thought it was pretty cool", here's the thing I'm amused at. You see that call number?

Well, here's a call number for a book I checked out earlier:
AUTHOR: Maguire, Gregory.
TITLE: Son of a witch : a novel
CALL NO: fic s Maguire
BARCODE: 33029056887888

So...apparently this zombie war actually happened when I wasn't paying attention. I should really pay more attention to current events.

Comments

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

i'm just curious why they classify it as literature.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

800: Literature and Rhetoric
810: American literature in English
818: Miscelaneous American literature in English

I can't get to the numbers after the dot until Lis comes home and shows me where our OCLC catalog is, or what her online OCLC resouce password is, but it's in the fiction/literature section.

Sorry.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

100% of all written fiction is literature.

[jennkitty.livejournal.com]

yes, but not all 100% of it is classified as nonfiction for library purposes. The 800's are "literature".

so i suppose to rephrase, "i wonder why they decided to classify it as "nonfiction, literature".

[katster.livejournal.com]

It just amused me that it got categorized with a call number as opposed to "fic", which seems to me to be the right place for it.

You have a point in that call numbers aren't necessarily representative of the fic/nonfic divide (although I confess to thinking that way about Dewey a lot of the time), but that cataloging decision just struck me as odd given the way the library was set up. I wasn't paying too much attention to *where* it fell in the system. :)

-kat

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Cataloging is a delicate art; beyond some broad guidelines, the choice of where a book ends up in the library is frequently a judgment call on the part of the librarian doing the cataloging, and that often happens on a branch-by-branch basis. The book's MARC record from the Library of Congress has it cataloged under 813.6 for Literature (and PS3602.R6445 according to the LC system -- also Literature).

Technically, all literature can be classified in the 813 section. The Dewey system does not have a separate "fiction" section; it's just an invention of most libraries to help keep their fiction collection in check. ;o)

This is Richard, former library sciences student, checking out.

[(Anonymous)]

Probably for the same reason I've seen Sir John Hackett's The Third World War: August 1985 classified as "social sciences, military science" instead of as a work of obvious fiction.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Technically, all literature can be classified in the 813 section.

I thought only English language literature went there -- and possibly only English language stuff from America. But I don't know where my wife's OCLC catalog is.

[katster.livejournal.com]

I think I have a copy of that somewhere in the massive collection of book boxes.

Augh.

-kat

[underpope.livejournal.com]

Well, okay. Conceded. You're right about that. :)