Bad Librarianship

I was thinking this past weekend what a disservice we do to everyone when we miscatalog something based upon our own personal perspective. I mean, one of my pet peeves is that many of the items cataloged about humanism, free thought and the other similar topics are most often cataloged by a person who catalogs Religion.

Why is this bad you might ask? Well they might touch on a few aspects of what these subjects are, but more often than not, you see that they get lumped into the classification of Humanism, not secular humanism, or those specific areas, just humanism. Or even worse, they get cataloged under the dreaded "Religion -- Controversial Literature" or "Jesus Christ -- Controversial Literature."

Problem is, that is not specifically what the book is about. In the case of Jesus, many items should go to "Jesus Christ -- Histrocity" if it is dealing with the question of whether Jesus existed, not "Controversial Literature."

Humanism itself fits under several categories. The philosophical aspects go under (philosophical aspects of)Humanism (B 821), and (other aspects of) humanism go under BL 2747.6 (Rationalism as a special theory under religion). There is a difference.

Additionally, just because a work is critical of religion, does not make it secular or controversial of religion.

With the above reasoning, I also should not catalog anything regarding agriculture (with the possible exception of crop circles) as I have no experience in dealing with it as a subject.