While looking through this book I cataloged at my internship this morning, I had an epiphany. Let me begin by saying that they don't really teach the Dewey Decimal Classification System in library school anymore. We briefly covered it in my cataloging class, but it wasn't enough to learn how to build numbers. Recently, this problem has been a big topic among catalogers and library schools. That's the most important reason for an internship- to learn this stuff and get practice. Anyways, this book explained that the DDC is arranged by discipline, and not by subject. At first they sound the same, especially since we say "subject" for the classification numbers at work, but there is a distinct difference. "It is the mode of discussion that is scientific, not the subject." Since the mode of discussion for theology books is "scientific," they are cataloged as nonfiction. Otherwise they would have to be fiction, of course.
