You'll notice I said "purported". The fiction/non-fiction is an obfuscation we librarians tell kids to make it easier to do library tours. The division is false. Everything in a library, including "fiction", can have a Dewey number. If we wanted to catalog "fiction" in the strict Dewey sense it would end up in the 800s somewhere, but that would make the 800 section too huge to be useful. So we pull out novels and alphebetize them by author/title and call it "Fiction". "Non-Fiction" is by default anything not in that section, so it includes poetry, folklore, ghost stories, etc. The reasoning for pulling "fiction" out is the same some libraries use to pull out Biographies - it makes it easier for many readers to find what they want.
A roman a clef would likely end up classed as literature, i.e. in fiction. Zami ends up (at least in Berkeley) in the 920s as a biography, though that may be regional.
This is so just the surface of the intrigue that goes on behind the cataloging of books... If you know anyone in need of a thesis, I've got ideas...
But now there's a patron who needs me, so I'll stop.
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Re: Where's that teen librarian?
Date: 2002-05-22 07:23 pm (UTC)A roman a clef would likely end up classed as literature, i.e. in fiction. Zami ends up (at least in Berkeley) in the 920s as a biography, though that may be regional.
This is so just the surface of the intrigue that goes on behind the cataloging of books... If you know anyone in need of a thesis, I've got ideas...
But now there's a patron who needs me, so I'll stop.
-sd