Moving Away from 'Fiction' and 'Nonfiction'

I'm seeking advice for moving away from the labels 'fiction' and 'nonfiction'. These words carry certain connotations which I don't think entirely fit the way we use them in this library, so I'm seeking some better labels. These are the categories of works in this library:

Reference:
Includes dictionaries, thesauri, atlases, etc. as well as encyclopaedias and multi-volume sets of nonfiction, like those published by Britannica or Time-Life.

??? (Seeking label to replace 'nonfiction'):
Includes traditional non-fiction as well as educational materials (curriculum and lesson guides, textbooks), self-help/how-to/DIY guides (which can be, by nature, mostly based on opinion and not verifiable fact), essay/opinion pieces
(again, opinions, not verifiable), biography/memoir (although biographies are based on research, autobiographies and memoirs are often subject to extremely unreliable human memory, and are prone to error especially when they feature such specificity as dialogue), and religious holy books (whether these are true or not is a matter of faith/belief, and what you say may be different than what I say).

Currently, pictorial references (such as collections of calligraphic alphabets or embroidered ornamentations; books which feature mostly or exclusively images and possibly brief descriptions thereof) are in this section, but I'm considering moving them into Reference.

Literature (replacing 'fiction'):
Includes novels, poetry, plays, screenplays, 'fictional non-fiction' (books which feature fictional information presented in a non-fictional format, like some Harry Potter tie-ins and the like, which don't feature typical qualities of fiction like character or plot), humour/satire (novels which feature humour/satire are in with the novels, but humour/satire which doesn't feature character, plot, etc are counted here), and comic books.

We briefly discussed some of the foibles of the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy in the GenreThing thread a while back, starting about here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/335425#8603867 but I'd love some opinions on alternative labelling.

I use "historical fiction" for stories about people that are based on facts but include conversations and events that no one could ever know about. I don't know whether that helps you at all. I used it recently for a "biography" of Mozart's sister written in first person.

I am not sure why, but I suspect this topic might get better answers from actual librarians.
https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/78/Librarians-who-LibraryThing

>3 gilroy: Good idea!

As >3 gilroy: said, this is a topic librarians deal with a lot, they can probably give you a clearer answer.

All classification systems are arbitrary and are based on ideas about what a given library will be used for. The fiction/non-fiction distinction is something that’s evolved in bookshops and many public libraries because such a large proportion of the books most of us read for pleasure are novels, so it makes sense that they should all be shelved together, sometimes divided up into sub-genres like romance, westerns and crime. Fiction vs. Non-fiction doesn’t feature in most academic classification systems, though: if you wander round a university library you’ll typically find that the novels are shelved in the literature section, divided up by period and region and mixed in with essays, books of criticism, author biographies and the like. If you are studying Jane Austen for a course, you’ll want to find both books by her and books about her and her contemporaries, so it’s helpful if they are all shelved in the same place.

I don't know that librarians (as professionals) will give any better answers than readers. In DDC, the basic division is fiction vs non-fiction. Look at the call numbers for most (US) public libraries. You will see DDC numbers for the non-fiction materials and FIC or SFF or ROM or YA, etc and usually the last name for fiction materials.

In academic libraries, Reference is usually any material the library doesn't want to leave the building and not always dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc...though those are the most common materials in reference. LCC doesn't really break cleanly between fiction/non-fiction since you classify based on the dominant topic of the work.

Just my opinion as a librarian that isn't a cataloger and is a heavy library user.

I appreciate the dialogue so far. I do have the novels in the literature section currently, and they are divided by genre (except for the classics, which are sorted by date).

If anyone has suggestions for a label to replace 'nonfiction' as in the use case I described in >1 GraceCollection:, I'd really love to hear some ideas!

>7 GraceCollection: “Facts and opinions”?

My native language does not have a word for non-fiction (or fiction - we have a few concepts but they are either a bit narrower or a bit wider than the English term). So it took me awhile to get used to the separation in English and it ended up being fact/opinion based. There are still books that defeat my categorization but for the most part, the system works for me.

>8 AnnieMod: Thank you for sharing! If you'd like to talk about it, you've made me curious about the kinds of categories your native language uses for books and how they differ from English-based systems!

>7 GraceCollection: General Works?

I'm curious as to the motivation to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. Is your collection for you or for not-you users? If not-you users, would the average user walk into the library and think "Memoirs are in X section and that's on the back wall (or wherever you put them)" or will they think "Memoirs are non-fiction and that's on the back wall."

When I walk into my public library, I don't have to think about where sci-fi/fantasy are. They are fiction...therefore they won't be part of any stacks that have DDC numbers. Physically, I know exactly where to walk to find that section.

If you are the user, you would probably do as well to look up synonyms for non-fiction. I just don't think you are going to find the word/s you want from outside your own brain. Again, my opinion; not a criticism. It seems like a "I'll know it when I see it" situation.

>7 GraceCollection: Why do you need a label for non-fiction? I just search for 'not (tag = fiction)' when I need it. I try to have a review for all my non-fiction books at least including a table of contents and an opinion on the book.

>10 lesmel: You do make a good point. I'm not the only user of this library, but the userbase is still pretty small. Something I have to remember to temper my creative ideas with is not confusing people! It didn't seem right to label plays and poetry as 'fiction', which motivated the change to 'literature', which I hope is self-explanatory to users. It also doesn't seem right, to me, to label mostly opinion-based books as 'non-fiction', but if I do decide to choose a different word, it's more important that it's clear what it means, than it is that it itches the pedant part of my brain.

>11 bnielsen: The first reason is call numbers. I've just redone call numbers for literature so they all start with L, symbolising they are in the literature section, so information books don't show up in the catalogue as being between fiction and poetry. It would be nice to do the same with the rest of the books, so that the entire literature section doesn't show up in the catalogue as being between biography and self-help. The other reason is in the physical space. We have a reference area and a literature area, and I need words to say that aren't, 'And over here is our not-literature, not-reference section!'

I'm prepared to resign to the word nonfiction, if I have to, I just hoped to find a word that satisfied the actual makeup of the collection a little better, the way 'literature' suits a collection including poetry better than the word 'fiction' does.

>12 GraceCollection: I struggle a bit with biographies and autofiction and .. too. (I also have a shelf with "weird books", but I don't label it as such.)

For some of these books I solve the problem by returning them to the library or to the second-hand shop :-)

>8 AnnieMod: In my country (France), we use the littérature/documentaire (literature/documentary) binary, although the terms fiction/non-fiction are gaining traction, probably because in everyday speech, the word documentaire/documentary is mostly used as shorthand for "documentary movie". I personally am quite attached to littérature/documentaire, which I feel are better descriptors, but that's probably a losing battle...

>9 GraceCollection: Bulgarian (my native language) just splits things differently.

All words and language related arts are Literature - written or oral, factual or non-factual.

Then Literature is split into "Art Literature" (best translation I can do) and others (science, popular science, memoirs, biographies, fact-based/reportage journalism and so on). Art literature is mostly what Fiction is in English - but it also usually encompasses things like personal essays, travelogues, opinion based journalism and so on. Anything that uses literary elements (similes, metaphors, descriptions and so on) extensively fits here.

The rest simply do not have an umbrella term (unless you want to use non-art literature).

Incidentally that makes drama and poetry classification a non-issue because they fit where they fit based on their contents (the split for forms is lower on the totem so you first decide if something is art literature or not and then you look to see what form it uses).

For the most part, in translation, "fiction" is translated to "Art Literature" and vice versa and non-fiction gets ignored when possible or non-art literature is used (and it always sounds weird) or the correct subgenre is used based on the context. And very often art literature is called just literature especially outside of specialized texts.

>14 Dilara86: I do like the word documentary, although (at least in my part of the English-speaking world) it often is used as shorthand for documentary films as well.

>15 AnnieMod: This is very interesting! Thank you for taking the time to share.