Over genre-isation

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

Yesterday 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.

Comments

[lzz.livejournal.com]

Apparently the library is gradually moving back towards basic alphabetisation for fiction, which seems far more useful to me. I've seen some appalling classification decisions, which I am not allowed to change. Bah.
(Which library were you in, btw?)

Hurray!

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I was in Milton Road. It's the central one I meant with the hb/pb segregation, though; Milton Rd doesn't have enough space or books for that. I gathered they were all the same, by the way that when I asked about the Brontes, and whether there was a 'literature' section I was missing, the librarian checked how they're classified in the central library.

Re: Hurray!

[lzz.livejournal.com]

Hah! Milton Road turned me down, or at least were less keen to have me than Cherry Hinton, which is now "the most organised it's ever been" as one lady said the other day.
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!

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

The idea that they might be not organised within genre had not occured to me. There is a literature section, at the appropriate point in Dewey decimal amongst the non-fiction, but it's used for poetry only.

The size of books thing makes sense, I guess.

Re: Hurray!

[lzz.livejournal.com]

Yes, we also have about 3 poetry books in the 800s in Dewey, along with books on 'How to Write a Sentence'.
*sighs*