New provision for fantasy sports

During their electronic Meeting 140B, the Dewey Editorial Policy Committee approved an exhibit adding provision for fantasy sports. When working on an exhibit on electronic games (keep an eye on the Dewey blog for more information on this), we noticed that some works on fantasy sports were being classed in 793.93 Adventure games, where “fantasy games” is in a class-here note. But while fantasy sports are literally a type of fantasy, with players imagining themselves managing professional sports teams, the “fantasy” at 793.93 refers to the genre of fantasy (e.g., The Lord of the Rings).

If fantasy sports didn’t belong at 793.93, where did they belong? We saw works on fantasy sports classed with the sport itself, with sports statistics, or as separate games. Each of those approaches made sense considered on their own, but the diffusion made us realize we needed to make clear where fantasy sports belong in Dewey.

While a game like fantasy baseball or fantasy football obviously has some connection to the sport being simulated, users looking for works on fantasy sports won’t necessarily care about works on how to play sports, or vice versa. This led us to put fantasy sports with indoor games in 793-795. Are fantasy sports games of skills? Yes. While outcomes are partially determined by the performance of real-world athletes, a great deal of skill goes into fantasy sports players picking the best athletes for their teams. With an open subdivision at 794 Indoor games of skill, then, we opted to continue fantasy sports to a new class, 794.9 Fantasy sports.

An add note at 794.9 lets you build from the numbers for individual sports in 796.3-796.9. For example, Winning fantasy baseball: Secret strategies of a nine-time national champion (previously classed in 793) can now be classed in 794.9357 Baseball--fantasy sports (built with base number 794.9 plus 357 from 796.357 as instructed at 794.9). In WebDewey, we added built numbers for the two most popular fantasy sports, baseball and (American) football, but numbers built for other sports, such as cricket, ice hockey, and soccer, are just as valid. We also added see-also references at both 793.93 and 794.9 to avoid any more confusion between fantasy games and fantasy sports.

Comments

[Ann Ryan]

Have you considered making it explicit where imaginary fantasy games (e.g. Quidditch) should be classed?
The heading certainly makes it seem as though they should be classed in the new number 794.9. After all, Quidditch is certainly a fantasy sport. But your description of the fantasy sports covered (e.g.Baseball) and the method of deriving numbers from existing (real) sports, makes this less of a good fit.
It's not a good fit under 793.93 either - as it's not an adventure game (or derived from a computer game).
Works on 'real life' Quidditch (it's been adapted into a real sport/game - without the flying on broomsticks element) would be classed at 796.2 - but I wouldn't have thought this would be a correct for the fantasy game.

[Alex Kyrios]

Quidditch is a sport from fantasy, but not a "fantasy sport" in the usual sense of that phrase. Most works on Quidditch in WorldCat are either classed with Harry Potter books or movies (e.g., Quidditch Through the Ages), or appropriately at 793.93 (e.g., Harry Potter Quidditch World Cup). There are very few works on "Muggle" Quidditch. I suspect works on it belong in standing room at 796.32, as it involves an "inflated ball thrown or hit by hand." Quidditch did come up in our discussions of this change, so we'll keep an eye on 794.9 to see if the new class draws such works.