Recently, I borrowed the book The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell. It is an autobiography of sorts; the author – a journalist – finds herself living in Denmark for a year, and sets out to find out what makes Danes the happiest people in the world. It’s definitely memoir, lifestyle, social experiment.
And yet I found it alongside travel guides for Denmark.
Why? How is this possible?
Well, it turns out that most libraries classify it as
900 – History and Geography
940 – History of Europe
948 – Scandinavia and Finland
948.9 Denmark and Finland. Trove stops here – 948.9
and then I lose the thread to get to 948.950612. One NSW library uses this specific Dewey number for their electronic copy of the book.
I don’t see this is a history book. It’s definitely about culture.
But this is not where my library classifies it.
My library classifies it as
900 – History and geography
910 – Geography and travel
914.89 – Using table 2 for 4- Europe 48 – Scandinavia – 489 Denmark and Finland
Which means it sits with the travel guides (Lonely Planet Denmark is 914.8904).
To me, another option (less popular but used enough to warrant a mention on Classify) makes more sense.
300 – Social Sciences
306 – Culture and Institutions
306.09 – Social history
306.09489 – From table 2, 4 for Europe, 48 for Scandinavia, 489 for Denmark and Finland
That at least places it in with social customs, rather than travel guides.
The back of the book has a small topic guide – Society/Travel. But it’s primarily society, not travel and definitely not history.
Mystery #2. My local library uses the title (well the first three letters of the title) as the book number, instead of the author like SCIS does. Is this common? I checked two other libraries I’m a member of that Trove listed as having a copy, and they both use “RUSS” for the book number.