It’s not clear how Your Humble Blogger missed this, but the OCLC has a list of the Top 1,000 library books, that is, the books owned by the most libraries in the greatest abundance. It’s not clear to me what their methodology actually is, nor to I care to waste a ton of time looking for it, but they’ve compiled this list of books owned by the 52,000 member libraries, and herded together, for instance, Psalters in with Gospels, Tanachs and so on for one entry. It’s pretty reasonable, although since it’s not clear if they do it consistently, I don’t know if they gather together all the Doonesbury collections in exactly the same way they clearly gather together the Garfield collections. Garfield is #18 with twenty-nine thousand copies on shelves, while Doonesbury is #80 with sixteen thousand. Still, it’s a fascinating list.
Looking over the list briefly (I didn’t download the spreadsheet version, but you can, Gentle Reader), Your Humble Blogger was led to muse on deacquisitions, rather than acquisitions. Is the reason the Montaigne essays break the top hundred because librarians can’t bear to part with them? Or because the copies get so little use they remain in pristine condition? Or because libraries really do continue to purchase new copies all the time? Are libraries really replacing old copies of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s Secret Garden and Little Princess as they wear out, or do they just have dozens of copies in the back left over from thirty years ago?
Speaking of the Little Princess: Machiavelli’s Prince is 57, Twain’s Prince and the Pauper is 125, Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince is 146, and Lewis’s Prince Caspian is 721. Miller’s Death of a Salesman is 278, Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop is 366, Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying is 722, Cornwell’s Cause of Death is 832, Agee’s Death in the Family is 924, and Mann’s Death in Venice is 957. Love’s Labor’s Lost is 204 (they didn’t go Garfield on Shakespeare), Lawrence’s Women in Love is 411, Ruiz’s Book of Good Love is 574, Garc’a M�rquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera is 579, and there are more with Lover or Loved or Loves; there are no entries with Sex in the title.
Oh, and The Celestine Prophecy is 688. Could be worse.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
Curiously, Great Gilly Hopkins is #1001 on the list of 1000.