Cat. & Reference: Mormon humorists, sharpen your pencils!
The Library of Congress makes weekly announcements about updates to the official thesaurus of Library of Congress Subject Headings. Usually these updates involve the addition of new authorized headings, although they may involve changes in form or, rarely, deletions.
As of February 13, "Mormon wit and humor" is a newly authorized subject heading, right there between "Moomins (Fictitious characters)" and "Mortes River (Mato Grosso, Brazil)." (Other honorable mentions include "Captive snails," "Drinking cups in the Bible" and "Puppet plays, Danish.")
Yes, we funny Mormons are taking our rightful place alongside purveyors of "Catholic wit and humor" and "Jewish wit and humor." (And we're apparently funnier — or at least producing more funny literary works — than the Amish, Anabaptists, Buddhists, Confucianists, Disciples of Christ, Druids, Episcopalians, Hindus, Jains, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, Moravians, Muslims, Neopagans, Pagans, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Protestants, Puritans, Quakers, Seventh-Day Adventists, Shakers, Shintos, Swedenborgians, Taoists, or Zoroastrians.)
However, this subject heading is brand new, so it hasn't yet been applied to any books. (It could be retroactively applied to the older books whose existence nudged the LoC into creating the heading in the first place, but retrospective authority work like this is pretty low on the list of most library's priorities. Which is not to say that I didn't spend 8 freaking hours this week searching for bib records with the subject heading "French Canadians--United States" to see if they warranted the addition of the subject heading "Franco-Americans," but that's a bit of a special case.) Anyway, the point is, now that this subject heading is out there, waiting eagerly to be applied by some cataloger, you, the Mormon humorist reading this, need to hop to it and write some books that fit the bill!
7 Comments:
My new dream is to write something that you can catalog under "Mormon wit and humor" and "Captive snails." And don't think that I won't.
So, off topic, but, my mom's new office has a giant dictionary on a pedestal in it and I thought of you.
What already existing works might you retroactively classify in this category, out of curiosity?
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Curses! What a time to have my book delayed yet again!
(Maybe Bangor can buy The Fob Bible...?)
Optimistic. - More power to you.
Chillygator - So . . . I should be on a pedestal? ;)
Confuzzled - Good question. I'd include books by Pat Bagley, Cal Grondahl, and and Robert Kirby, for starters, as well as books like Stories and jokes for Mormon folks, The lost plates of Laman, Two by two : a cartoonist's look at missionary life, etc. Some of these would be covered by the subject heading "Mormons--Humor," but that could also include books by nonmembers which mock Mormons, which I don't think would be included in "Mormon wit and humor."
Th. - I'll talk to the acquisitions staff.
I LOVE Moomins.
I can't believe "Swedenborgian wit and humor" is not yet an authorized heading. This is a fallen world.
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