{"id":2737,"date":"2005-03-25T12:36:59","date_gmt":"2005-03-25T17:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/25\/2737.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:48:10","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:48:10","slug":"not-sorted-by-overdue-fines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/25\/not-sorted-by-overdue-fines\/","title":{"rendered":"not sorted by overdue fines"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s not clear how Your Humble Blogger missed this, but the OCLC has a list of the Top 1,000 library books<\/a>, 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.\n

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<\/I> and Little Princess<\/I> as they wear out, or do they just have dozens of copies in the back left over from thirty years ago?\n

Speaking of the Little Princess<\/I>: Machiavelli’s Prince<\/I> is 57, Twain’s Prince and the Pauper<\/I> is 125, Saint-Exupéry’s Little Prince<\/I> is 146, and Lewis’s Prince Caspian<\/I> is 721. Miller’s Death of a Salesman<\/I> is 278, Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop<\/I> is 366, Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying<\/I> is 722, Cornwell’s Cause of Death<\/I> is 832, Agee’s Death in the Family<\/I> is 924, and Mann’s Death in Venice<\/I> is 957. Love’s Labor’s Lost<\/I> is 204 (they didn’t go Garfield on Shakespeare), Lawrence’s Women in Love<\/I> is 411, Ruiz’s Book of Good Love<\/I> is 574, Garc’a M\ufffdrquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera<\/I> is 579, and there are more with Lover<\/I> or Loved<\/I> or Loves<\/I>; there are no entries with Sex<\/I> in the title.\n

Oh, and The Celestine Prophecy<\/I> is 688. Could be worse.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 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\u2019s not clear to me what…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2737"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17353,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2737\/revisions\/17353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}