Ahmadinejad Classification System
August 26th, 2010 Brian HerzogI recently noticed in our Reference collection one of the quirks of the Dewey Decimal System that people often refer to as "serendipitous" - but look at the picture below to see if you also see a problem:
The books that caught my eye are these (biggify the photo to see the Dewey numbers):
- Ref/809.927/Prin - Imaginary people: a who's who of modern fictional characters
- Ref/809.933/Ency/2002 - Encyclopedia of Holocaust literature
- Ref/809.933/Mang/Pb - The dictionary of imaginary places
And here's the Dewey breakdown:
809 - History, description, critical appraisal of more than two literatures
809.91-.92 - Literature displaying specific qualities and elements
809.933 - Literature dealing with specific themes and subjects
I didn't see .927 described in either DDC21 or DDC22, but it was the call number specified in that book's CIP data (©1987), so it must have been phased out long ago.
And so, I get that these books are each about specific kinds of literature. But come on - a book about the Holocaust shelved between two books about imaginary things? It really is like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other fool Holocaust deniers got into OCLC and caused this to happen - a cataloger sleeper cell.
I'm going to talk with my Head of Technical Services to see how we can fix this.
