Recently, I wrote about individual biographies in 930-990. To quickly recap, individual biographies typically should go elsewhere unless they’re for historians, historic figures, or ordinary people used as examples of life in a certain period.
With collected biographies in this area too, be careful in applying standard subdivisions. The large add table at 930-990 plays a similar role to typical standard subdivisions here. Notably absent from this table is an equivalent notation to T1—092 Biography. That doesn’t mean you can’t use T1—092 at all in the 900s, just that you usually need to go to a specific period. Ordinary people go in the period in which they live; public figures typically go with the highest office they attained, or when they were most prominent. What about a historian who specializes in the entirety of a country’s history? Then you can use 930-990:007202 Historians and historiographers. So a biography of a historian of all of Chinese history could class at 951.007202, though one who specialized in Ming dynasty history would class at 951.026092.
Collected biographies, then, are the main reason you’d add biographical notation to the broadest number for an individual country’s history. Notation 930-990:0099 Collected biography is for “Description, critical appraisal, biography of people associated with the history of the continent, country, locality but limited to no specific period”. For example, use 954.0099 for collected biographies of people from India across time. In practice, these are often works that describe national leaders and other famous figures, but the same treatment would apply for ordinary people, whose lives illustrate the place over time.
Either way, if you’re simply adding T1—092 to the broadest number for a country’s history, that’s a mistake! If you’re tempted to do so, the right answer depends on the work you’re classifying.
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