[yardstick]

There’s a grain of truth here, in a bit of a tangent: librarians classify all books using a system like Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress Classification.

While not adjusting titles, librarians do have some influence on how a book is classified and thus filed/organised within the library. Check out the wiki article on Dewey[1] for the various options for homosexuality, which has numbers for it including under areas including mental illness! Depending on the library systems leanings you may still find it there or the section for sexual disorders or hopefully in the sexual relations area. (Disclaimer: I just used this as an easy example because it’s on Wikipedia)

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification

[wizzwizz4]

The Dewey Decimal classification system is ridiculously flawed, and no self-respecting library uses it these days (unless it always has, and hasn't got around to re-organising). Even my school's little one-room library didn't, something I found annoying at first, but came to appreciate.

[yardstick]

Disagree that it’s ridiculously flawed. It has issues like any system, but it still works well the majority of the time.

> no self-respecting library uses it these days (unless it always has, and hasn't got around to re-organising).

The vast majority of library systems have been around long enough where Dewey was the defacto choice (or LCC). Just checked a few like the British Library, the French National Library, and all the other libraries I’ve looked up now in London, all Dewey.

[IncRnd]

"Libraries in the United States generally use either the Library of Congress Classification System (LC) or the Dewey Decimal Classification System to organize their books. Most academic libraries use LC, and most public libraries and K-12 school libraries use Dewey." [1]

[1] https://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit03/libraries03_04.pht...

[ajmurmann]

What are some alternative systems? I'd expect that any categorization system for content needs to make subjective choices.

[QuercusMax]

Library of Congress is the standard for academic and professional institutions, at least in the US.

[whatshisface]

Those numbers were added as a consequence of the books that needed to be classified in the 1930s, and now that there are books that don't belong in the category there are new numbers.

[yardstick]

It still comes down to librarian interpretation. Sometimes they will just defer to another source, like the national library of their country, or the publishers recommendations, but at least in my experience working part time in a library many years ago, the librarians out back doing the processing and cataloguing would refer to Dewey index guides and also make judgements based on the nature of the book (eg mostly practical vs theoretical nature would be the difference between a 6xx filing and somewhere completely different).

[jt2190]

> Check out… the various options for homosexuality, which has numbers for it including under areas including mental illness!

Classifying a new technology is another major area where the original taxonomies need to be extended in order successfully index material. The internet, for example, didn’t exist at when LC/Dewey were originally defined.

[everfrustrated]

Last time I was in a public library books about the Internet were next to books about UFOs!