The Myth of the Non-Fiction Section of the Library · 9:42pm Nov 9th, 2016
Someone on Reddit posted this picture today as clever social commentary on the election, but a lot of people were confused – why are these books in the non-fiction section?
Well, first off, these are, indeed, non-fiction books – they’re game guides, which are how-to guides, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t be classified in with the fiction books.
But one of them is a book of lore about a fictional world. How come that isn’t in the fiction section?
The answer, as it turns out, is that the idea of a “non-fiction” section is actually something of a lie. Or, more accurately, it is technically correct – but it doesn’t mean what it sounds like it means.
In the US and some other English-speaking countries, the Dewey Decimal System is frequently used to classify books. This system is a bit wonky at this point (the religion section, 200, is 90% devoted to Christian stuff, whereas Islam shares a single number with Ba’hai), but it more or less is an arbitrarily decided-on numerical system for organizing books by discipline. This is both good and bad; it means that all the books about psychology are together, but a book about the psychology of fashion, a book about the sociological implications of fashion, a book about religious-related fashions, a book about French fashion, and a book about how clothing is made would not end up anywhere near each other.
But still, you can at least find the books, because they’re organized by at least one useful dimension.
This classification system is actually meant to be all-encompassing – and indeed, fiction is classified within it! American fiction, for instance, is 813, while English fiction is 823.
But most libraries break out their prose fiction section, because it makes more sense to organize that in other ways.
The entire 800 section is actually devoted to the literature of various countries, meaning not only “fiction”, but also poetry (which is often fictitious), drama (again, often fictitious), literature, humor and satire, and numerous other things. They simply break out the “fiction” (really prose fiction) into its own thing to avoid cluttering up the 800 section (as in many cases, it would take up half the library by itself – plus, separating fiction by the nation of origin of its writer is counterintuitive when it is all written in the same language).
The 700 section is devoted to art and recreation, and obviously a great deal of art is of things that don’t really exist. And the 200 section is the religion section, which means it is at least mostly fiction, as there are many religious beliefs, and clearly only yours is correct. 
Not to mention the fact that a lot of books about diet, psychology, self-help books, conspiracy theories, and the like are less than truthful. The non-fiction section is not intended to be truthful – indeed, the numbers are nothing more than a means of organizing books by discipline.
So, in the end, the “non-fiction” section, while technically correct, is also not accurate in the sense that none of the books there are fictitious or about fictitious subjects – it is really just the non-prose fiction section.
So the next time some wag puts the Bible in the fiction section, you can be twice as pedantic when you put it back under 220 while making a wry remark about how they listed the wrong author on the spine.
And now you know!
Clever.
The real answer is to use the Library of Congress classification system instead.
I used to work in some libraries, and had a lot of the general categories memorized for a time, but that knowledge has long since faded.
It's non fic cause soon it WILL be nonfic. Trump shall kill us all. Get one of these, build a bunker.
I was aware of this, but didn't have a firm grasp on the details until I looked up Dewey Decimal designations for a Writeoff entry. The system really does show its age these days.
Nice post. IIRC all computer-related books get a single number in Dewey dec., but I forget what it is. 43, maybe.