5.11 Did you know that Isaac Asimov is the only author to have published books in all ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System?
Description
This article is from the Isaac Asimov FAQ, by Edward J. Seiler ejseiler@earthlink.net and John H. Jenkins jenkins@mac.com with numerous contributions by others.
5.11 Did you know that Isaac Asimov is the only author to have published books in all ten categories of the Dewey Decimal System?
No, because that claim is not true, despite the fact that it is repeated
in numerous lists of "amazing but true facts" that circulate on the
Internet, and even shows up in the third edition of The New York Public
Library Desk Reference . Asimov himself mentioned this a couple of times,
but always by prefacing it with the clause "I have been told by a
librarian that...". The reason that the claim is not true is because not
one of Asimov's books was classified in the 100s category of Philosophy.
Here are the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System:
000 - Generalities
100 - Philosophy
200 - Religion
300 - Social Sciences
400 - Languages
500 - Pure Sciences
600 - Applied Sciences & Technology
700 - Arts
800 - Literature
900 - History & Geography
Although a great number of his books were classified in the 500s and the
600s, there are three other categories that were sparsely represented (for
Asimov, that is):
200s - 7 titles
400s - 2 titles [ Words From History and Words From the Myths ]
700s - 3 titles [ Visions of the Universe , Asimov's Annotated Gilbert &
Sullivan , and Isaac Asimov Presents Superquiz ]
A more accurate statement is that Isaac Asimov is the only author who has
so many well written books in so many different categories of library
classification.
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