Hopefully the book is cross-referenced under both "categories."
Fred
On Jun 30, 2005, at 2:10 PM, <dpbsmith(a)verizon.net> wrote:
How do libraries handle it?
When I was about eleven, I discovered that my local library had a
copy of
Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" shelved among the
science books.
I went to the librarian full of indignation, demanding that they
reshelve it
under "science fiction." The librarian somehow calmed me down...
and the book
stayed where it was.
Well, I'm older. (And to tell the truth the geologists seems to be
a lot less
uniformitarian than they used to be. Asteroids extinguishing the
dinosaurs?
Well, OK. But I still don't think the fall of manna that saved the
Israelites
resulted from the earth passing through a comet's tail.)
Anyway, it seems to me that librarians must deal with this sort of
thing all
the time. And the many public libraries that use the Dewey Decimal
system
can't just fall back on the Library of Congress. Although perhaps
there's
some central authority that recommends Dewey classifications. But
in any
case, someone has to decide whether Velikovsky is science or
science fiction.
Who does? and how?
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