I was cataloging (expanded) a book today, which appeared to be a tough customer. Could not find the record in any of the usual places - Library of Congress, British Library, OhioLink, NLB, NLA - with any of the usual clauses - title, author, author/title. There was an earlier edition cataloged at NUS, which appeared to be where the assistant had copied the record from.

The first subject heading given for this first ed. was "Knowledge, Sociology of". Epistemology, in other words. However it did not look quite right for the item I had.

Finally I look at the book itself more carefully. The blurb on the back cover tipped me off - aiyah, it's related to writing! Reading the Preface again a bit more carefully showed this to be true. For composition students. You'd be hard pressed to tell from the table of contents, tho' now I think about it, these are authors that writers love - Gloria Anzaldua, Bell Hooks, Walter Mosley - or at least, I first heard about them in a teaching of writing class. Jane Tompkins and Nancy Sommers were there too, tho' others like Thomas Kuhn and Sherry Turkle tended to throw you off the scent.

In any case, then it was a simple matter of assigning 808.0427 and College readers, because that's where all the readings for writers go. Yes, it is about different types of academic disciplines, but in any case, our library doesn't really have stuff like that, and it will be better off and more likely found with its fellows in the composition section.