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Poetry and plays in library classification

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Cudzoziemiec:
Why are poetry and plays shelved with non-fiction? I assumed it was an oddity of the Dewey decimal system so asked a librarian, who turned out to have recently arrived from Cape Town. She told me that the DD system gives poetry and plays their own category and in SA they are given their own section of shelving; but in UK libraries they are shelved with non-fiction. So, why? Because surely they're a form of fiction?

Ian H:
Is this fiction?


--- Quote ---WOULD I could cast a sail on the water   
Where many a king has gone   
And many a king’s daughter,   
And alight at the comely trees and the lawn,   
The playing upon pipes and the dancing,            5
And learn that the best thing is   
To change my loves while dancing   
And pay but a kiss for a kiss.   
 
I would find by the edge of that water   
The collar-bone of a hare     10
Worn thin by the lapping of water,   
And pierce it through with a gimlet and stare   
At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,   
And laugh over the untroubled water   
At all who marry in churches,     15
Through the white thin bone of a hare.
--- End quote ---

Cudzoziemiec:
I'd say so, yes. It's a product of imagination, not facts and information. It's not what I think of as non-fiction. According to Dewey it's neither fiction nor non-fiction, assuming the librarian I spoke to was correct.

pcolbeck:

--- Quote from: Cudzoziemiec on 21 May, 2017, 06:55:34 pm ---I'd say so, yes. It's a product of imagination, not facts and information. It's not what I think of as non-fiction. According to Dewey it's neither fiction nor non-fiction, assuming the librarian I spoke to was correct.

--- End quote ---

Surely the script for a play is non-fiction. It's an instruction manual for putting on the play. A play when performed is fiction, or at least can be it could of course be historically accurate in which case it would be a live action documentary).

Clare:
Poetry sits in the 800s in Dewey, along with other literature.

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