At their September meeting, the Editorial Policy Committee reviewed and approved another sports-themed proposal: EPC Exhibit 142-S79.3 Pickleball and racquetball. Ruby Woodard, Senior Dewey Classifier at the Library of Congress, noticed more books coming in for cataloging about pickleball. If you aren't familiar, pickleball is a game similar to tennis or badminton which is played with short paddles and a light perforated plastic ball (a wiffle ball). It's been around since 1965 but has been growing in popularity, especially with senior citizens. Ruby did the research needed to demonstrate there was appropriate literary warrant for pickleball, and it was a simple task to create a new number 796.348 Pickleball.
In reviewing this hierarchy, I noticed that racquetball was a class-here concept at the number for squash, 796.343. I'm not an expert or even a player, but I investigated further and discovered racquetball and squash are two distinct sports, with differently sized racket, balls, and courts, as well as different scoring systems and techniques. Luckily the next number in this sequence was vacant, so I was able to propose racquetball be moved to an adjacent number, keeping materials on this subject close to each other. EPC approved relocating the subject to a new number: 796.344 Racquetball.
Although the changes aren't too dramatic, I needed to do a fair amount of research to ensure I understood the difference between racquetball, racketball, and rackets (all three are different sports!). You can see my summary of that research on page 2 of EPC Exhibit 142-S79.3.
photo: pickleball players on the court ("Grand Canyon 2014 Pickleball Tournament" by martinvirtualtours is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Comments