HIT:Nonfiction Explanation, Part 3

[Tracey Donaldson <Bookluv@AOL.COM>]

part 3.........

Good questions!
On the 398 question, I explain that fiction is made up by one person, that
it came out of one person's head, and we know who that person is. With
folklore, we can't pin it down to one person, since the stories have been
around for hundreds of years, and have grown and changed along the way. As
an example, I use a student in the class. "Well, let's say Danny wrote down
a story that he made up by himself, out of his own imagination. He is then
the author, and I can put a call number on his book of FICTION CLARK (or
whatever). But if Danny is writing down a story that he heard his mom tell
him, and his mom got this story from her dad, who got it from his aunt, who
heard it from...how do we know who originally made up the story? If we can't
tell, then it's probably a folk tale"

Poetry gets a special section all to itself, since it's a special type of
fiction - it's not necessarily a story.

Literature - I haven't the foggiest idea!

I'd be interested to see how other people explain these.
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Hopefully some variation of the following might help you.
The Dewey Decimal classification system was created by one man.  He intended
his classification system to encompass all knowledge hence the inclusion of
not only 398.2 folklore but also the 800s Literature which he meant to include
novels. Dewey was not the person who called the Dewey section non-fiction.
Someone else (I don't know who) decided that it would be easier to pull
fiction from Dewey and then labeled the section Fiction.  By contrast, the
Dewey section became non-fiction.
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Tracey,
When Melvil Dewey devised the Decimal System he intended that all books be
given numbers. Fiction published in the US would be assigned to 813; British
fiction, 823; Spanish fiction, 863 (I think), and so on. The college I
attended in the late 60's practiced this until they switched to the LC system
which also assigns a certain designation to fiction (in the Ps as I recall).
Folklore is in the 300s because it is part of the culture. Many libraries,
especially school libraries, have pulled fiction and easy books to make them
easier to find, and perhaps also so they don't overwhelm the nonfiction
collection.  I assume the folklore is still 398 to keep it "corralled" so it
doesn't become lost in the fiction.

I try to teach my students that nonfiction books will have numbers, but that a
number doesn't necessarily mean nonfiction. Of course in some libraries, very
easy nonfiction may be filed in the easy section; then that statement won't
work either.
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Would it help to let them know that "fiction" also has a Dewey number?  They
really belong in 8*3, with the second number indicating the nationality of
the author.  Librarians found this cumbersome and started shelving fiction
separately and disregarding the country of origin, put them all together.
In order to have some organization and to make it easier for people to find
what they want-they shelved them alphabetically by author.
******************************************************************************
My understanding of Dewey is that it can be used to organize all books.
Fiction titles are meant to be organized under the 800s, as some "higher
literature" is.  Most libraries pull out fiction into a separate section to
make cataloguing simpler.
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        I started a whole discussion about fiction versus non-fiction on
LM_NET several months ago!  Lots of librarians agreed with me that we need
to get away from teaching the sections of the library as Fiction and
Non-Fiction. There were many alternatives suggested:
(1)  The Dewey Decimal System contains classification numbers for all types
of books, but fiction novels in English are so popular and such a large
segment that they are separated and usually marked with F, FIC, etc. They
could have been given the Dewey numbers for American novels and British
novels and have been shelved in the 800's. (Short Stories, too, if these
are shelved as a separate entity at the end of the novels or integrated
within)
(2) Non-novel fiction and factual books numbered by Dewey classification in
one section - fiction novels in  English (and short stories?) in the other.
(3)  Reference as a third section containing factual and fiction works
given Dewey classification numbers. I have a few large poetry anthologies,
Reader's Encyclopedia, Books of Quotations (fact and fiction), and
mythology and folklore references in the Reference Section as well as the
usual factual references. And how about a copy of the Bible in the 200's
section of Reference?
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        I emphasis the fallacies of the idea of nonfiction whenever
possible.  When I teach
the kids the Dewey system, we talk about it as a classification system
that was intended
to hold EVERYTHING!  I tell them that I could classify them and find a
place for them in the Dewey system.  My middle school kids get a chuckle
out of that idea.  I ask them
what they would think about still having all of the "fiction" books and
biographies in the Dewey part of our library media center.  They are
glad that libraries decided to create separate sections for fiction and
biographies.  We also talk about why some fiction is still in the Dewey
section.

        I have a favorite way to impress that what is "information"
depends on factors such as point of view, the best knowledge of the
time, etc.  I share exerts from David Macaulay's book, MOTEL OF
MYSTERIES.  [From Amazon.com- List Price: $11.95, Paperback - 95
pages,(September 1979) Houghton Mifflin Co (Pap); ISBN: 0395284252]

In case you are not familiar with it...

        The book starts with the idea that our civilization buried
itself under junk mail and
when there was an accidental reduction of 3rd class postage rates.
Also, our pollution
contributed to our demise.  A future scientist digs up a "burial
chamber" which would be
better known to us as a motel room.  This scientist painstakingly
interprets all that he
finds.  For example on the "sacred collar" he finds the ceremonial head
band with the chant, "Sanitized for your protection".  A drawing depicts his
colleague, Harriet wearing
the collar and headband.

The students love this book.  The pictures are a riot.  We then also
look at Macaulay's book or video, "PYRAMID".  In the video, he talks about
doing a best
guess based on his research as to where he should place the pyramid's
temple.  I then show the kids a 1990 newspaper article showing that they
did finally find the great pyramid's temple under a cess pit.  It was
found exactly where Macaulay thought it would be.  His best
research-based guess was correct!   After reading Motel of Mysteries, my
kids KNOW that not all research necessarily results in accurate
conclusions.  We talk about some known things that turned out to be
wrong.  ("Tomatoes are poisonous", etc.)
        Before we do Internet research we always talk about at least
some of the clues to validity of sites.
******************************************************************************
Tracey Donaldson, LMS
Tioga Hills Elementary
Apalachin, NY
bookluv@aol.com

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