Thursday, October 07, 2004

513 What are your librarians buying for your library?

If you are a Democrat and think your library is doing an outstanding job with the "newest arrivals" shelf, or if you are a Republican constantly submitting suggestions for purchase and think you are getting lame excuses, Tomeboy has crunched the numbers and found out why you are both correct. In his article 223:1 (the ratio of Democrat librarians to Republican), he has taken the best seller lists of politically biased books, left and right, and compared them to OCLC WorldCat holdings records.

If you're not a librarian [what in the world is an OCLC? what is a holding?], some of this will seem a bit arcane, but you'll understand the conclusions--twice as many current, best-selling liberal books will make it to the shelves of your local library.

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