Today’s question from Wendi: Prior to today, were you aware of Open Shelves Classification? Have you helped to classify any books yet? Is this something you are interested in? Did you know that if you classify any books, it will also show you who else has classified the book?
I am indeed aware of it! I saw the blog post on it when it was first added to the bottom of pages. (I love the blog). I’ve since classified a few books. I usually try to whenever I visit a book’s work page, which doesn’t happen all that often. I did see that other people can classify the book too, but usually very few have done so. Overall, I think it’s pretty cool. I’m cycling through my list of possible jobs that do not involve PhDs (for my forthcoming time off) and I think I’d quite like to work in a library, so this is fun for me. It just annoys me that there is only one category for fiction. I think it would be more useful if it was more specific. Although some books cross genre boundaries, I think most of them are firmly in one spot or another, and I know the library in my parents’ town puts little stickers on the book lamination to show which genre the book is. It’s very helpful.
I’ve classified a few books, too. I totally agree that it’s rather annoying
that there is only one category for all fiction. Just fiction seems far too broad, and
it seems like such a broad category is just a bit worthless. I keep finding
myself looking for “mystery” or “young adult” and the like when I go to classify only
to be disappointed again and again..
Yes, it would be helpful to be able to break fiction down into more sub-categories. Although, I have to admit that until today I’ve never thought too much about the classification of books at LT. I knew about the OSC project, but hadn’t really paid much attention to it. Guess I’ll be watching more closely now. And I agree – working in a library would be a great job!
I made the same observation about the one fiction category…vs. the 45+ for non-fiction…in my answer too. I thought I might be misunderstanding somehow. But I guess not since others say the same thing,
I too want more categories for fiction. But hey, at least we still have tags.
I left a suggestion on the LT group for OSC – I feel that having multiple fiction categories would be a lot more helpful!
Thanks for stopping by and participating in Thingers last week! I’ve got the post up for this week. ~ Wendi