[Publib] It's a fiction that there's fiction in Dewey

[Dale McNeill]

I think we (librarians) and teachers need to do a better job in general of
expalain "fiction" and "non-fiction".  I've heard (as a customer) quite a
few lessons and tours in which a librarian or teacher says something like
"non-fcition books are true".  At some philosophical level, that might be
true, but there are an awfully lot of books (and other materials) in
classified as non-fiction that aren't "factual".  There are plenty of
examples in most libraries in the 800s. But there are also many books that
are not "factually" true, though the author may believe them to be true.  Or
books that were "true" when written, but are no longer so.  I've always
tried to say something like "in this library we put novels and short story
collections in "fiction"; everything else is "non-fiction".  And then I talk
about humor, comic books, plays, and so forth.  Once one has learned
"non-fiction is true" it's hard to unlearn it!

Dale


On 3/5/07, Peter Bromberg, SJRLC <bromberg at sjrlc.org> wrote:
>
> It's a fiction that there's no fiction in Dewey, and that's a fact.  (Or
> should I say it's a non-fiction...?)
>
> Anyhoo, according to the OCLC Dewey Summaries posted at:
> http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/deweysummaries.pdf, 813 is
> reserved for "American fiction in English".
> <snip>
>
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