Home

What do libraries own?

From my mother comes a link to the top 1000 books, described as:

…the “Top 1000” titles owned by OCLC member libraries—the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the “purchase vote” of libraries around the globe.

OCLC is the “Online Computer Library Center,” a “a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing information costs.”

Thursday, November 25, 2004 - 10:54am
|

Comments

Rob L.'s picture
Rob L. on November 25, 2004
Ratio of Shakespeare to John Grisham on the list; 3:1
Nils's picture
Nils on November 25, 2004
Don’t read too much into that, though. I note Garfield is higher on the list than either Gulliver’s Travels or most of Shakespeare’s work. I’m so proud of our progress as a civilization. I’d guess about half of the titles are also on the list of “Top 1000 Books People Claim to Have Read But Never Have, Unless You Count A Tuesday All-Night Pre-Exam Cram Session Involving An Entire Pot of Black Coffee, Some No-Doz, and A Well-Thumbed Copy of the Coles’ Notes Version”. Number One on that list, by the way: “A Brief History of Time”, by Steven Hawking. I own it. You might own it. Neither of us has read more than the first 18 paragraphs without slipping gently into a coma.

Post new comment

You can comment anonymously if you must, but I would prefer it if you used your real name.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. If you have a Gravatar account associated with the e-mail address you provide, it will be used to display your avatar.
Optional. If you enter the address of a website here, your name will be publicly linked to the site.
  • Adds typographic refinements.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.