Philosophical Objections
It was not until the nineteenth century that the systematization of subject heading access to all information was established. It was also during this period that distinct cultural attitudes existed, ones that viewed human knowledge as linear, made of discrete fields of study ordered hierarchically. Within this hierarchy and order, fiction was distinguished from non-fiction, and the subject information in non-fiction was considered far superior to that in fiction (Ranta 1991, 8).
To nineteenth century librarians, imaginative literature was a "troubling" aspect of the library's collection. Not only was sensational fiction devalued (romance novels for example), but novels which are considered classics today were controversial components of the collection. Sheila Intner speculates that this attitude to fiction stems from the fact that fiction is perceived as being non-factual or unreal, and thus untrue. If it is untrue, it is less important and less worthy of study than nonfiction which is perceived as describing the real world (Intner 1987, 443).As discovered by Judith Ranta,
Librarians had great difficulty reconciling their avowed mission to provide morally elevated books with their equally important mission to serve their users OE*whose tastes included a strong appetite for morally questionable fiction. Early ALA president Arthur E. Bostwick commented, -- at is a matter of grief to many librarians that their libraries circulate so high a percentage of fiction. (Ranta 9).
In fact, some libraries in the 1890's went as far as to develop a system known as the 'two-book' system; it allowed a reader to take out two books at a time, but the second one could not be a novel (Ranta 9). This system was clearly a strategy to encourage readers to read non-fiction.
It is not surprising that within this cultural climate that when people like Cutter and Dr. Andrea Crestadoro developed subject headings, they provided headings for only non-fiction works. Subject headings were developed at the time to enable the user of a catalog to search for non-fiction books whose authors and titles were unknown (Ranta 8). This historical sketch explains why subject access to fiction was not dealt with at the turn of the century. But the cultural values and climate of the nineteenth century does not explain why for the rest of the twentieth century when the values had altered, a standard for subject access to fiction was not devised.
A study by Esther Jane revealed that the negative attitude toward fiction diminished as the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth century. Popular fiction gained acceptance in the first decade of the twentieth century when the recreational objective of the public libraries was approved. Since then, librarians no longer see their mission in life is to improve their patron's minds through "good" non-fiction books. Consequently, "there are indications that fiction is no longer considered less worthwhile than non fiction" (Hayes 1992, 443). As Katia Roberto, a special collections cataloger at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, said in an email interview, "We offer headings for everything else we catalog; why should fiction be different? I wish we would stop marginalizing it" (February 2003).
If the attitude changed by the beginning of the twentieth century, why did it take until the last decade of the twentieth century until any serious procedures for fiction access were implemented? Clearly, it is because there was, and still is, a multitude of reasons for why subject access to fiction is problematic. These reasons impeded and continue to impede the development of intense subject access to fiction in the twentieth century. The lack of standardization in later years was a result of practicalities, rather than philosophical objections. These reasons are discussed in the next few sections.