Some schemes are relatively precise: we usually know which language in which a give work was primarily written; we also often know which country the author identified with at the time, even if it wasn't where the work was written. Other classifications are more difficult to pin down: jewish, gypsy, american, southern american, surrealist. These are not genres, are they, because they identify not just the characteristics of the writing but also the lifestyles of the authors.
But there are problems with using only language and country schemes. Tough decisions are involved in specifying a set of languages: are these two respectively "castillian" and "argentine" or are they both spanish? Is this country serbia or yugoslavia?
And more importantly, are language and country sufficiently interesting? Or do we sometimes want to browse works in other ways? I see a guide to jewish works as being similar to a guide to "american novels". The works are inspired by a background that is common to many people. This background is not itentifiable by language, country, or religion.
So now we have a technical challenge. First of all we start with freedom of classification: Babelguides.com can and should organize information however it's most usable to users; it need not conform to any pre-existing classification schemes -- not even language.
Ideally we will soon add country and language selectors to the Search Books page. Using this interface you can look at all portuguese books if you want to browse books from brazil, angola, mocambique, portugal, etc.
As for what is on the left-hand Browse Books menu, we are limited to a small space so we've decide to make our own classification scheme. It's flexible, and indeed it's subject to change; for example you may see Asian for a while and then Japan,China,Southeast Asia later on. It all depends on what's in the database, and the divisions are not necessarily precise. Hopefully, however, they are at least interesting and usable.
Please share your opinions and ideas about how you'd like to see information organized and accessed on this site.
