025.431: The Dewey blog

Your move: New provision for chess openings

Electronic Meeting 141B of the Editorial Policy Committee included a small exhibit that is breaking some new ground for Dewey. In the chess schedules, 794.12 Strategy and tactics has three subdivisions, for openings, middle games, and end games. Simple enough. But there's much more literature on openings than later parts of a game. After all, you can go into a game of chess with your first move planned out; what happens in the middle and end game really depends on what unfolds.

Especially for a library with specialized chess collections, like the Mechanics' Institute in San Francisco, the class for chess openings, 794.122, can get pretty crowded. Steven Dunlap of the Mechanics' Institute Library contacted us about this and suggested a resource for subdividing openings. In the world of chess, different openings have their own codes, taken from the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings. The so-called ECO codes are in wide use, and available online, such as through Wikipedia. But the broad categories of ECO codes, like "Flank openings" and "Indian Defenses," wouldn't mean much to many libraries, and would look out of place in a general classification system like Dewey.

Our solution? We authorized 794.1225 for specific openings, and have provided an arrange note:

(Option: Arrange by codes from the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings [ECO codes], e.g., Sicilian Defence 794.1225 B20)

This allows for some separation between general works on chess openings and those focusing on specific strategies. We've officially sanctioned the use of ECO codes to further arrange 794.1225, keeping it as an option in case it's not right for your library.

This isn't the first time Dewey has referred to an external authority for classification in a topic. The Manual note at 579-590, for example, explains how we've structured the schedules for plant and animal taxonomy, and recommends sources such as the Tree of Life project for more information. But we haven't done this in the schedules before. When the editors discussed it before presenting the exhibit to EPC, we thought it was worth trying something new.

You may also notice the arrange note is explicitly marked as an option. While arrange notes have always been optional, that hasn't always been clear; EPC also approved an exhibit that will change that going forward.

What do you think of this addition to Dewey? Are there other areas that could benefit from similar treatment? As always, we'd love to hear from you!

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.