[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV: Libraries?

Fri Jul 1 03:25:16 UTC 2005

dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>How do libraries handle it?
>
>When I was about eleven, I discovered that my local library had a copy of 
>Immanuel Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" shelved among the science books. 
>I went to the librarian full of indignation, demanding that they reshelve it 
>under "science fiction." The librarian somehow calmed me down... and the book 
>stayed where it was.
>
>Well, I'm older. (And to tell the truth the geologists seems to be a lot less 
>uniformitarian than they used to be. Asteroids extinguishing the dinosaurs? 
>Well, OK. But I still don't think the fall of manna that saved the Israelites 
>resulted from the earth passing through a comet's tail.)
>
>Anyway, it seems to me that librarians must deal with this sort of thing all 
>the time. And the many public libraries that use the Dewey Decimal system 
>can't just fall back on the Library of Congress. Although perhaps there's 
>some central authority that recommends Dewey classifications. But in any 
>case, someone has to decide whether Velikovsky is science or science fiction. 
>Who does? and how?
>
The Library of Congress classifies "Worlds in Collision" at QB603, and 
suggests the Dewey Class 523.1.  These are both in the science 
area.http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v3=4&ti=1,4&SEQ=20050630232438&Search_Arg=Worlds+in+Collision&Search_Code=TALL&PID=19110&CNT=25&SID=1

Some of these things are on  the fringes of science, but they lack the 
nice human story to make it as science fiction.  I'm sure that LoC needs 
to face these problems with great regularity.

Ec