[Publib] Classics?

[Meghan Miller Brawley]

When we moved in April, we did away with all our genre sections,
including classics. Criticism is in the 800s, biographies in the
biographies, fiction in fiction. Pleased comments of "I didn't know x
author also wrote x book" from patrons discovering new books by
breaking out of their genres far outnumber the complaints. It also
makes finding a book much easier -- there's only one (well, two -- we
have a "new books" section) place to look.

We have a small library -- about 45000 copies -- so your mileage may vary.

-Meghan Brawley
Reference Librarian
Harker Heights Public Library
Harker Heights, TX

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:20 AM, Nann Blaine
Hilyard<nbhilyard at zblibrary.org> wrote:
> Ranganathan’s 4th law:  save the time of the reader.    Where are your
> patrons likely to look for such books?
>
>
>
> We used to gauge an author’s ‘serious’ quotient if  Twayne’s Authors Series
> did a book on him/her. Nowadays  literary criticism is wide-ranging.
> Popular/mass-market authors become the subjects of academic papers and
> dissertations-that-turn-into-books.  (Examples:  John D. MacDonald, Stephen
> King, J. K. Rowling.)
>
>
>
> Years ago I directed a library where my predecessor had convinced
> (hoodwinked?) the board into permitting  recataloging the entire collection
> using Library of Congress Classification.  Among his arguments was that
> books by an author would then be shelved alongside books about an author.
> His approach meant that books by authors *he* deemed serious/important were
> reclassified while others languished in the fiction stacks.  Patrons had a
> difficult time finding anything.
>
>
>
> IMO, in a public library, the novels themselves should go in the fiction
> section and the criticism in the 800’s.
>
> Also, collections of short stories by the same author should go in fiction;
> anthologies in the 800’s.
>
>
>
> Nann
>
> @ZBPL
>
> Thinking back to how handy the Twayne’s series were, and the “Twentieth
> Century Views,” and those slim University of Minnesota writers’
> biographies….
>
>
>
>
>
> From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org [mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org]
> On Behalf Of Tony Ross
> Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 10:41 PM
>
> To: publib at webjunction.org
> Subject: [Publib] Classics?
>
>
>
> I'm curious how people treat "classics" in their systems, since I just moved
> to a branch where we have the following range of stuff in our "classics"
> section: the predictable authors like Austen, Conrad, Dickens, Melville, all
> the Shakespeare, some Greek tragedies, some random plays by big name
> playwrights (eg. Tennessee Williams), some mid-range writers like E. M.
> Forester, Waugh, etc., some Homer, some of what might be called modern
> classics like Fahrenheit 451, Lord of the Flies, 100 Years of Solitude, Bell
> Jar, Brave New World, 1984, etc. and probably a few other odds and bobs I'm
> forgetting.
>
> Just to make it even more confusing, many of these materials are also found
> elsewhere in the branch, such as the regular adult fiction shelves, the 800s
> for the plays and poetry, and the Juvenile section. Since there is no
> system-wide standard to follow, I'm trying to come up with some reasonably
> solid criteria for what a "classic" is for our branch, with ease of location
> being my primary goal:
>
>  I'm thinking that all the plays and poetry should go with the rest of the
> plays and poetry in the 800s. Next, I'm also thinking that maybe I should
> think about it in terms of individual authors being "classic" rather than
> individual works. That avoids the problem of having some of an author (like
> Bradbury) in the classics section, and the rest of his "lesser" works
> elsewhere. Seems crazy to split an author's body of work up like that (at
> least to me). Finally, I'm thinking that I need to set some kind of
> arbitrary cut-off date to differentiate between classics and modern
> classics. Originally, I was thinking 1900, but then you lose stuff like "The
> Great Gatsby," which strikes me as a sure-fire classic. Then I was thinking
> that WWII makes a nice cut-off, but you start to lose books like "Animal
> Farm" and "1984" which also strike me as definite classics...
>
> Anyway -- I'm sure other, smarter people have figured this problem out, so,
> any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated!
>
> Tony Ross
> District of Columbia Public Library
>
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"A word after a word after a word is power." Margaret Atwood