According to Table 3 (Subdivisions for the Arts, for Individual Literatures, for Specific Literary Forms) short stories and novels of a single author are classed together. What is the underlying justification for this arrangement? Is it based on reader's preference? The short story is after all quite different from a novel.

The justification for classing the short stories and the novels of an author together is we believe users are likely to want the fictional works of an author classed together rather than separately. For works of individual authors, Dewey divides literature into broad categories -- poetry, drama, fiction, essays, etc. -- then puts works by each author together under each category. So under poetry long narrative poems (such as epic poems) are classed together with short lyrical poems (such as sonnets), and long and short plays are classed together, just as happens with novels and short stories.

Some Dewey users have criticized Dewey for not grouping individual authors' works enough, and would prefer (for example) that Shakespeare's poems were in the same number as his plays (822.33) rather than in 821.3, so we feel confident that most users would prefer an author's short stories to be in the same number as the longer fictional works.

Submitted by: Thanks to M. Vijayalakshmi at Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, India, for submitting this question.
Last revised: 19 July 2005