[Publib] when does fiction become literature?

[Judith Turner]

Personally, as a library user, I prefer finding fiction filed alphabetically by author regardless of when it was written or whether it's achieved status of a classic.

I realize this works best with novels; other "fictional" literary forms like plays, poetry,  short stories, etc.tend to wind up in the 800's but readers are often interested in those works by form and seem to prefer to have them  broken out. 

It appears that the DDC classifiers at LC and academic libraries like to give new fiction 800 numbers because they are giving them LC classification numbers when they create bibliographic records.  Well it fills the MARC 090 field but I find these numbers less than helpful and can see it leading to a parallel Dewey classification scheme for fiction just as there is for non-fiction which really isn't necessary at this point.

The genre breakouts can be enough of a hassle to figure out, especially when after [x]  number of Stephanie Plums or Marcus Didius Falcos, a library suddenly decides to put [x+1] in New fiction, not New mysteries for some reason (because the author is now a "NY Times Bestselling Author"?)

Keep novels in fiction, please.

Judy Turner
Whitefish Bay, WI
 
       
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