Over genre-isation
Jan. 27th, 2004 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ghoti_mhic_uaitYesterday I went to the library. There I discovered that Jane Austen is not 'general literature', but 'young adults'. I learnt that most of Terry Pratchett's books are 'fantasy' but Lords and Ladies is 'science fiction'. Thankfully the two ghettoes are next to each other, striding shoulder to shoulder (if book shelves do, indeed, stride) into the nystery books.
Now, I can see why having some sort of classification of a 'I like Diana Wynne Jones (who unlike Austen is considered suitable for adult shelving) so might I like Susan Howatch?' Well, maybe, but it's certainly not a given. I can understand classifying books by the way they feel or by the themes they are likely to present. However, one man's fantasy is another man's poison. Would it not be simpler to keep the little stickers (if you like one with a house on, you might like another with a house on), but shelve them all alphabetically? It would certainly be easier to find things.
And why would one do it that way for hardbacks, but by genre for paperbacks? Why do they need to be carefully segregated? And isn't it more fun to randomly pick up something you've never heard of that just happens to catch your eye?
It's a mad world, my friends.
Anyway, back to the classification I do understand, please to complete the following sentences:
[Poll #239353]
Thankyou.
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 02:48 am (UTC)Haven't read anything by the other two :-(
Also, in the direction of random recommendations, read _Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil_ by John Berendt *now*, and then spend several weeks cursing the fact that he hasn't written anything else.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 05:03 am (UTC)There was one in the Cancer Research shop on Burleigh Street on Saturday....
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 03:15 am (UTC)I do read,but mostly books on history,especially local history of which there is much around the area I live in.
But it's been a long time since I've been able to totally immerse myself in a novel, I think the last one that I read,properly, was "Jude The Obscure" for my English A level a few years back..I liked it.
I'm dipping into "Stargazey Pie" at the moment..it's light and I can identify with the place ans the people.
xx
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 07:14 am (UTC)*Amazoning* as I type.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 05:13 am (UTC)and regarding the first half of the post
Date: 2004-01-27 03:37 am (UTC)If a library (or bookshop or whatever) is going to divide things up by some kind of genre classification then I think the ideal is for each book to appear in all the places that it might fit, rather than just one of them. (e.g. Pratchett in both humour and fantasy.) For a library that might prove expensive, though; but you could work around this by having card markers in all but one of the places directing the reader to the location where the physical book might be found. (Symbolic links instead of hard links/copies, in other words.)
Shelving alphabetically still has a slight wrinkle: a book with multiple authors might be sought (or impulse-picked) from the position of any of the authors (e.g. Deus Irae belongs in both D and Z).
Hardbacks vs paperbacks just makes me wonder if different librarians are in charge of each l-)
Re: and regarding the first half of the post
Date: 2004-01-27 08:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-27 08:24 am (UTC)(Which library were you in, btw?)
Hurray!
Date: 2004-01-27 08:31 am (UTC)Re: Hurray!
Date: 2004-01-27 08:38 am (UTC)We are hb/pb segregated even though we are quite small, possibly to do with the size of books? although none of the shelves are actually an appropriate size/shape to stop the paperbacks falling off them anyway.
All the libraries are more-or-less the same, but there is room for some kind of individual input, i.e. we used to be unalphabetised genre sections and now we are alphabetised genre sections because it drove me mad.
Our unofficial 'literature' section is a single shelf hidden at the bottom of general fiction. And I have a horrible feeling we have no Brontes at all.
Re: Hurray!
Date: 2004-01-27 08:54 am (UTC)The size of books thing makes sense, I guess.
Re: Hurray!
Date: 2004-01-27 09:02 am (UTC)*sighs*
VigRx and more pills
Date: 2004-03-10 06:29 am (UTC)http://uk.geocities.com/maturlapics