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?
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?
Quite often, this will be done by the publisher (certainly in my experience with school libraries), who will put a Dewey number on the copyrights page. Not exactly neutral, but that's the way it seems to be done as far as I can tell.
Sam
On 30/06/05, Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com wrote:
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?
Quite often, this will be done by the publisher (certainly in my experience with school libraries), who will put a Dewey number on the copyrights page. Not exactly neutral, but that's the way it seems to be done as far as I can tell.
This is part of the CIP process - cataloguing-in-print. Basically, a proof copy of the book is catalogued to a basic standard, and this gets put on the flyleaf; it means that you can open a book and create a catalogue record without having to go to the effort of cataloguing it.
Classification numbers generally get assigned at this stage, but they're often inaccurate (especially for more abtruse subjects), and libraries often reclassify from scratch on receipt. This I wouldn't put too much faith in. The cataloguer is quite often not the publisher - in the US, it's often the Library of Congress. (Look carefully, you'll see "The Library of Congress has catalogued the X edition as follows: ...")
Hopefully the book is cross-referenced under both "categories."
Fred
On Jun 30, 2005, at 2:10 PM, dpbsmith@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?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 30/06/05, dpbsmith@verizon.net dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
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?
Dewey is in fact controlled by a very strong central organisation - you should see the money they charge! <g> It's currently in the 22nd edition, of four hefty hardbound volumes; one a guide to implementing, two detailed references, and a voluminous index; even then, you still find quite impressive ambiguities.
If you want, I can go and have a look at the weekend and see if it discusses the classification of such books; it'd be interesting to note what, if anything, it has to say.
[And as a sidenote - I have done guerrilla reshelving in the past, I confess...]
dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
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?
From my limited experience talking to librarians, and much less limited experience browsing libraries, the typical way it's done is to cross-reference under any categories that seem relevant, and shelve under the one that the author seemed to be aiming for. So if it's clearly intended to be a work of science-fiction, it'll be shelved there. If it's intended to be speculative science or something of that sort, it may be shelved under science.
They generally avoid some of the problems in this discussion because categories like "pseudoscience" don't exist---a book expounding a physics theory will be shelved under physics, and whether it's a good book by a Nobel Prize winner or a crappy book by a kook isn't the cataloging system's job to judge.
-Mark
dpbsmith@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?
The Library of Congress classifies "Worlds in Collision" at QB603, and suggests the Dewey Class 523.1. These are both in the science area.http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=4&ti=1,4&SEQ=2005063...
Some of these things are on the fringes of science, but they lack the nice human story to make it as science fiction. I'm sure that LoC needs to face these problems with great regularity.
Ec
On Thu, 30 Jun 2005 dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
How do libraries handle it?
[snipping example]
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?
Based on conversation with a couple of friends who are librarians (one with a degree from UC Berkeley), & from working in the college library while I was at school, I understand cataloging books is a chore no one wants to do from scratch: 99+% of the time, the Library of Congress (LC) decision is adopted without a second thought because it's the lowest cost solution to the problem -- & it supplies both the LC & Dewey classifications.
In fact, the research of book cataloging systems was a dead science until Yahoo came along some ten years ago; one friend who is a book cataloging geek (he actually tried to convince me to let him assign catalog numbers based on his own scheme to my personal library), sadly remarked no new research had been done since the 1930s. It's a case that in the English-speaking world, both the Dewey or LC systems are "good enough" for their needs. (Those that don't use one of these either follow a home-brewed system created in the 19th century, or, as in the case of the British Library -- avoid the issue of cataloging, & simply assign a shelf number to their books.) And migrating to a new system is an unnecessary cost most libraries -- which are perennially short on funds -- want to avoid.
Geoff
On 01/07/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In fact, the research of book cataloging systems was a dead science until Yahoo came along some ten years ago; one friend who is a book cataloging geek (he actually tried to convince me to let him assign catalog numbers based on his own scheme to my personal library), sadly remarked no new research had been done since the 1930s. It's a case that in the English-speaking world, both the Dewey or LC systems are "good enough" for their needs. (Those that don't use one of these either follow a home-brewed system created in the 19th century, or, as in the case of the British Library -- avoid the issue of cataloging, & simply assign a shelf number to their books.) And migrating to a new system is an unnecessary cost most libraries -- which are perennially short on funds -- want to avoid.
India uses Colon classification, which I believe is the 1930s system, and I'm not sure you can really call UDC, the turn of the century one, "home-brewed" - it gets a lot of usage, international standard and all, although in the English-speaking world it's a minor partner to Dewey. (The two are, in many ways, similar; UDC is a bit more flexible, in general terms). And then there's Bliss, which is mildly obscure and American, but does get some use. There are also specialised ones - I've experience of NLM, the National Library of Medicine scheme, but there's plenty others - for specialised subfields. Not a dead area, just one where the big breakthroughs seem to have been made <g>
UDC's certainly common enough, and viewed as standard enough, that I was taught it alongside Dewey, for what that's worth.
On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, Andrew Gray wrote:
On 01/07/05, Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com wrote:
In fact, the research of book cataloging systems was a dead science until Yahoo came along some ten years ago; one friend who is a book cataloging geek (he actually tried to convince me to let him assign catalog numbers based on his own scheme to my personal library), sadly remarked no new research had been done since the 1930s. It's a case that in the English-speaking world, both the Dewey or LC systems are "good enough" for their needs. (Those that don't use one of these either follow a home-brewed system created in the 19th century, or, as in the case of the British Library -- avoid the issue of cataloging, & simply assign a shelf number to their books.) And migrating to a new system is an unnecessary cost most libraries -- which are perennially short on funds -- want to avoid.
India uses Colon classification, which I believe is the 1930s system,
That's the one; my friend refers to it as the "cutting-edge" classification system.
and I'm not sure you can really call UDC, the turn of the century one, "home-brewed" - it gets a lot of usage, international standard and all, although in the English-speaking world it's a minor partner to Dewey.
Hmm. I hadn't heard of UDC, & after reading the Wikipedia article, I suspect I've probably been in a library that uses it, & assumed that it was Dewey. (I confess that I don't look that closely at the catalog numbers on the spine of the book, & could have easily confused the two.)
(The two are, in many ways, similar; UDC is a bit more flexible, in general terms). And then there's Bliss, which is mildly obscure and American, but does get some use.
Also read the Wikipedia article on that one. Sad to learn that the home library ofits founder gave it up years ago.
[snip]
Not a dead area, just one where the big breakthroughs seem to have been made <g>
That's the ebb & flow of any discipline; I figure in library science there is also the lack of any easy breakthroughs, & little or no money to devote to reasearch. But I remember someone (either Kernighan or Pike) once making the comment that research into Operating Systems is in the same boat -- & probably for the same reasons.
Geoff
And thats the way it should be done, by intended subject, not by editorialising wikipedians.
Jack (Sam Spade)
a book expounding a physics theory will be shelved under physics, and whether it's a good book by a Nobel Prize winner or a crappy book by a kook isn't the cataloging system's job to judge.
-Mark
Mark wrote:
"[A] book expounding a physics theory will be shelved under physics, and whether it's a good book by a Nobel Prize winner or a crappy book by a kook isn't the cataloging system's job to judge."
Jack added:
"And thats the way it should be done, by intended subject, not by editorialising wikipedians."
I don't see how this example is relevant for Wikipedia. Should any theory or discipline be put into the category "intended" by its proponents? And should those proponents get to decide what categories it *isn't* put into? So we must put Creationism into the Science category and we can't put it into the Pseudoscience category? I don't think that's really the NPOV. (It sounds more like the Sympathetic Point of View which the (no doubt fine) people on Wikinfo state as their goal.)
Regards, Haukur
Well, the real question is -- what's the point of categories? It is for useful taxonomy. It is neither to be sympathetic nor to be editorializing. Would it be "useful" to have "Creationism" filed under "Science"? I don't think so. For a library with a fixed and rigid category system (none of these fancy computer nested categories so easy to change), it makes sense that they wouldn't sub-categorize too far down. We're not fixed by such a technical limitation though, and I don't think it is much of a stretch to say "is in the canon" and "it is not in the canon" is a useful organizing principle -- not just in terms of finding other information, but in terms of quickly evaluating the probable reliability of said information.
One of the first articles I created here is the somewhat unexciting [[Figurative system of human knowledge]], the tree of Diderot and d'Alembert, a wonderful artifact in the history of taxonomy (from the famed Encyclopedie). One of the things which was considered most heretical about the Encyclopedie was its taxonomic system -- aside from snide little anti-clerical cross-references ("See: eucharist" under "Cannibalism"), it also daringly classified theology as only a sub-category of philosophy (rather than a super-category of it), and placed "knowledge of god" precariously close to "black magic"!
FF
On 7/7/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
Mark wrote:
"[A] book expounding a physics theory will be shelved under physics, and whether it's a good book by a Nobel Prize winner or a crappy book by a kook isn't the cataloging system's job to judge."
Jack added:
"And thats the way it should be done, by intended subject, not by editorialising wikipedians."
I don't see how this example is relevant for Wikipedia. Should any theory or discipline be put into the category "intended" by its proponents? And should those proponents get to decide what categories it *isn't* put into? So we must put Creationism into the Science category and we can't put it into the Pseudoscience category? I don't think that's really the NPOV. (It sounds more like the Sympathetic Point of View which the (no doubt fine) people on Wikinfo state as their goal.)
Regards, Haukur
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Jul 1, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Geoff Burling wrote:
In fact, the research of book cataloging systems was a dead science until Yahoo came along some ten years ago; one friend who is a book cataloging geek (he actually tried to convince me to let him assign catalog numbers based on his own scheme to my personal library), sadly remarked no new research had been done since the 1930s. It's a case that in the English-speaking world, both the Dewey or LC systems are "good enough" for their needs. (Those that don't use one of these either follow a home-brewed system created in the 19th century, or, as in the case of the British Library -- avoid the issue of cataloging, & simply assign a shelf number to their books.) And migrating to a new system is an unnecessary cost most libraries -- which are perennially short on funds -- want to avoid.
I've been in libraries that organized their books by date of publishing. While I'm sure that made their lives easier as new books simply got added to the newest set of shelves, it made finding any related books a pain. There's definitely some poorly thought out systems out there still because no one has the funds or motivation to do a massive reorganization.
Laura
I wondered about the same thing last month... I was at a librarian's convention discussing blogs and information sharing.
OCLC, the online computer library center, is one of the big repositories of catalogue information. They take input directly from member libraries, so for small works that might only exist at a few libraries, they trust what those member librarians say about the works' classification. (They're also cool because they are considering a WorldCat wiki for annotating their database. http://outgoing.typepad.com/outgoing/2005/05/worldcat_wiki.html )
I wrote them to inquire after the classification of Wallace Reyburn's humorous 1968 'biography' of Thomas Crapper, "Flushed with Pride" as "non-fiction". Here is part of their response:
======================================== Classification and subject analysis for a majority of the records in WorldCat are generally based on guidelines set by the Library of Congress using their Subject Cataloging Manuals and their classification schemes. These items can likely be gotten from the Library of Congress: http://loc.gov
We ask our member libraries when cataloging to follow the AACR2 cataloging rules and the rule interpretations and guidelines set by the Library of Congress.
[...]
[I]t was originally cataloged by the Library of Congress as a Biography which puts it into the non-fiction category. There is also an authority record indicating that this record relates to a real person, another test for whether it is a true Biography or not. ===========================================
--Sj
On 6/30/05, dpbsmith@verizon.net dpbsmith@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?
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l