Aren't collections of quotations supposed to be classed at 808.88? I was looking at the CIP data on a book of quotations recently, and it suggested 082 as the number. To make matters even more confusing, I've also seen a quotation book in another library classed at 080. I work in a small library and prefer to keep all my quotation books together at 808.88, but I have a feeling that that may not be advisable. But why not?

The basic distinction between 800 and 080 is that material in 800 is limited to literature (as defined at the time it was written), while 080 covers collections of material in all subjects. The latter number may cover famous political speeches, inspiring religious and social messages, military memoirs, scientific observations, technological discoveries, etc., or quotations therefrom.

Two of the numbers you cited can be contrasted in a second respect: 808.88 encompasses all languages, while 082 is limited to collections in English. The literary equivalent to 082 is 820 (collections in English, and English literature, respectively). You add an 8 to 820 to make it the single-language equivalent of 808.88. That is, 808.88 is miscellaneous literature in all languages; 828 is miscellaneous literature in English.

Part of the problem facing both editors and users of classification systems is that they are shooting at a moving target. Miscellaneous collections for the general reader are relatively recent phenomena. Even as late as 1876, when the DDC was devised, there was relatively little miscellaneous material for the general reader that was not intentionally literary. In the subsequent century and a quarter, quotation book compilers have changed their mindset; they now think they are offering real information for real people, not literature for dilettantes. Perhaps librarians have continued to stuff nonliterary material into literary numbers long after the compilers abandoned their literary pretensions. The ambiguity of the word "literature" does not help; we still speak of literature searches in the most mundane and practical subjects.

Another problem is that we may be supplying more numbers for miscellaneous material than the typical small library thinks it needs. The very idea of classes of miscellaneous material is suspect, especially classes at opposite ends of the schedule. It is likely that many libraries are inclined to do what you suggest: Ignore the superabundance of choices, picking (and sticking with) the one number that was suitable for most of their collections of quotations at some point in the distant past.

We believe that this is the wrong choice. We caution users against using old numbers for new material, because then they no longer can take advantage of the standard numbers supplied by the Library of Congress and other libraries, and found in records in WorldCat (the OCLC Online Union Catalog). If you have a collection of quotations that starts with Shakespeare and the Bible, and goes on through Plutarch and Dante, Lincoln and Churchill, Darwin and Diderot, Gandhi and Mao Zedong, it belongs in 080, not 082, 808.88, or 828.

Last revised: 09 January 2004