The Top 1000 Books Owned by Libraries

A friend sent me the following link to 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.

Here is the top ten:

1. The Bible
2. The Census
3. Mother Goose
4. The Divine Comedy, Dante
5. The Odyssey, Homer
6. The Iliad, Homer
7. Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
8. Lord of the Rings (trilogy), J.R.R. Tolkien
9. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
10. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

A few observations:

• The Bible, number 1. Well, um, OK.
• Lots of "classics" - the Greeks, the Romans, American literature. Again, not surprising.
• Number 15 on the list - Garfield. Yes, the lasagna eating cat beats out Macbeth (#19), Moby Dick (#34), and Tale of Two Cities (#42), just to name three.
• No Stephen King. But yes to Michael Crichton, Mary Higgins Clark, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Tom Clancy, even John Grisham.
• The definitive work on reference (used by a generation on Albany MLS students and taught by the man, until his death) by Bill Katz (#905).
• Lots of children's books. I have one (a child) so lots of those titles I know (and the stories by heart).
• One cookbook (that I found), "The Joy of . . ." and one drug reference (Merck).

It takes a while to navigate the list, but it's an interesting read, no pun intended. How many have you read?