More books than Harvard
LibraryThing has passed Harvard University, the second-largest library in the United States. LibraryThing members have cataloged some 15,731,298 books, putting us 175,000 above Harvard's count (as reported by the American Library Association).There are, of course, many similarities between Harvard and LibraryThing. For example, neither institution was founded by a Harvard graduate. Also Harvard has a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. If members can be believed—and why not?—LibraryThing has one too. But there are also differences. Where Harvard has 53 books by J. K. Rowling; LibraryThing has 117,866!
Anyway, it's a great excuse for a party—in Cambridge. We propose a big, open cookout for Saturday, July 28, possibly ending with Scorpion Bowls at the Hong Kong. Abby and I will plan and discuss it on the Bostonians Group.
It will be fun to drive down from Portland, ME. We've got a lot of Cambridge connections at LibraryThing. I grew up and spent much of my life there (over by Fresh Pond). Abby currently lives in Cambridgeport. And Altay graduated from Harvard. It certainly my favorite place; I'm positively itching to get back to the Harvard Bookstore!
We'd love to hang out with local LibraryThing-ers. Pencil us in?
PS: We also hit 20 million tags. Yipes!
PPS: No, we're not comparing LibraryThing's virtual "collection" to Harvard's real one in any way except size—if you gathered all of LibraryThing members' books together, and put them on shelves, they've fill about the same space (give or take).
We find these numbers a good way to get people to understand that LibraryThing isn't somy tiny, geeky hobby project ("Catalog your books? Who would want to do that?). Anyway, if you're tired of the milestone, we don't have another one until 20 million books, which won't be until the Fall.
Labels: cambridge, harvard, harvard university, librarything size, party, widener
posted by Tim at 1:53 AM
37 Comments:
I think your links need changing from athena.librarything... to www.librarything...
Hey. Thanks.
You mentioned in a previous post that the "size" thing wasn't a big deal. So why post about it all the time? It is becoming a little boring.
And as you admitted yourself, the comparison is bogus since they actually have the works, you don't. They generally don't have huge numbers of repeats, you do.
Anonymous, it's not a big deal - and by my count there have been several blog posts between the last "pole position" update and this one.
It's a fun and interesting comparison (to me at least) and I'm sure most members are grown up enough to realise it's not a true comparison.
Is there a count of the number of distinct works in LT? That would give a more logical comparison with other collections. Or does "Unique works" in the Home Page Vital Statistics mean that? (It ought to mean works with only one copy in LT. It currently stands at 2,095,384.)
Well, "unique works" doesn't really reflect the number of editions, because all editions get subsumed under one work. But to me, the Mynors edition of the Georgics is a far different thing than the Ferry edition/translation, even though both contain the Latin text and both are under the same work. So, there must be a line, with editions on one side and mere reprints/format changes on the other. So, a formula would be to take the number of unique works, add to it the number of true editions, and withhold from it the number of reprints and duplicates.
> the comparison is bogus
The comparison gives a sense of scale. If all of LT member's books were brought together on shelves, they would be about the size of Widener and the other Harvard Libraries.
> So why post about it all the time?
Well, 15 was a good milestone, as was second place. From now on, milestones will be rare. We've got the BL at 20-something, then 25, then the Library of Congress at 30.
A cook-out July 28th? That sounds great, and might even be be do-able for us.
I like the milestone posts, so there.
Hearty congrats! The mushrooming continues apace!
I gotta say, though--when my Yalie self logged on today and saw the Harvard crest adorning the opening page, I blurted "Hey! What the HELL!" at the screen. (Have other crests and logos been displayed as they've eaten LT's dust?) If only the revised version on the blog page had been displayed instead; I would have found it quite delicious.
Wish I could make that cookout . . .
We may have a copy of the Biblia latina, but as it has an ISBN I have my doubts on it really being a 1455 edition :-)
It's an electronic CD-ROM fascimile, sadly. No 42-line bibles are in private hands any more, so I doubt we'll see one turning up...
[I wonder sometimes what the oldest physical volume catalogued here is; it's impractical to work out, though, as a lot of people use the date field for "originally written" rather than "this edition published"
For more Harvard-bashing:
http://www.librarything.com/blog/2007/06/fifteen-million-books.php
Numerically, the ISBN 0000000000 is vaid. The checksum checks out. But it's never been used. I propose we assign it to the Gutenberg Bible!
T
The more interesting number is the number of unique works, as this is generally what libraries contain, and it provides a sense of the total corpus of books that most people could own and read.
I often hear you can only read 2000 books in a lifetime on average and there are 50+ million books (150 million?) to choose from. But in reality, LT has show there are really "only" a few million unique works that most people read and own. I wonder what those other books are, the long tail of out of print books that no one reads or owns anymore.
w00t!
This news is indeed celebration worthy!
How long until we pass the LoC?
Oh, I *want* that suit. I can see the headline "Harvard University sues larger library over use of logo."
There is no way all of the LTers books would ever be in one place. And unlike a real library you can't check out a book from LT so why use a title like "More books than Harvard" -- it doesn't even type check :-) If you had said something like "LT catalog is bigger than Harvard's", it is accurate and something to be proud of.
The thing I love is Harvard's crest now spelling minimus. Great!
Thanks for noticing :)
Seeing the Harvard logo was a bit "Whoa deja vu" for me, because I was just looking at a Harvard viewbook . . . don't really plan on applying, but still, it's like, is Harvard planning on taking over my life? Or just for the week? *paranoia*
You're making a fool of yourself with this... Most of us seem to be here to keep track of our own books and socialize, with no interest in any of this. I'm posting here now only because I resent having the website changed to suit your little competition. Your change is really amateur. Keep your own personal agenda about this to a level where it absolutely does not in any way affect the user experience!
bvs said...
"There is no way all of the LTers books would ever be in one place."
Imagine a suitable building where, upon the death of a L'thinger, their contribution is added to the physical shelves and hence the catalogue.
Why, in about 125 years IT WOULD be bigger than Harvard!
Stbalback: the 2000 books figure, is that based on books of a certain length, or reading level? It'd be interesting to find out how they came up with that figure.
And on another note, I think it's fun to see how large the LT catalog is.
Oooh! Dry ice... drunken business students hitting on townies... I'd almost fly back for it. Congratulations, LT!
A light-hearted joke interfered with the otherwise non-functional upper left-hand corner of your screen. Really?
Part of what makes LibraryThing is this stuff—the little quirks and jokes—and that it's put together by people who feel comfortable having fun without worrying that one user is going to get all knotted up about it. If we let you run the site, we'd be laser focused on "users," and forget that the very term is an insult to people's humanity. We certanly wouldn't have invented bookpile contests or the Unsuggesters, or blogged all the time, or Twittered, or had meetups or wasted time integrating with tiny bookshops for the fun of it—and everything else that makes us not our antiseptic, highly-focused and characterless Amazon-funded competiror. In fact, since LibraryThing was a lark to begin with, we never would have started at all.
I hope you weren't around on April Fools!
> Why, in about 125 years IT WOULD be bigger than Harvard!
It's too bad that LibraryThing doesn't ask members to send us a book, instead of $10. It wouldn't be Widener, but we'd have one hell of a cool library!
Anonymous I like the humourous posts. If they bother you then don't read the blog. Simple.
I don't believe that 2000 books bit... I mean I don't know what the average life expectancy is - but even if you only had 50 years to read (and we won't get into whether you're counting childrens books - I was the strange kid reading books 3 or 4 times the size of the other kids in my class and still beating them on the number of books read) that would only be 40 books a year - anyone who likes to read could EASILY surpass (likely double or triple - I don't know I don't keep track of how many I read in a year - I ought to) that number in a year... as a child I would have surpassed that number in a month!
Man, I wish I were going to be home that weekend! Nothing better than discussing books over BBQ and drinks!
Ah, wrong Cambridge - nevertheless, congratulations..!
"Catalog your books? Who would want to do that?" Them's the very words I said to my daughter when she first told me about Library Thing! Oh well, everybody's entitled to a silly moment now and then.
Dang, I'll miss the Cambridge party by a few days, as I'll be back from the north by the 27th! But have a great time. I'll shed some molecules on Mass. Ave and Brattle St. before you meet.
Tim, how could we miss the wonderful shield? I love it. And what I love MOST of all about LT is that from the start it's been a lark, and I thought everyone who would even be reading anything here would accept LT in that spirit, even despite its growing success! You guys like to think of neat and fun things to do, and you love to experiment, and you're certainly involved in a very innovative and positive way with the continual evolution of our culture's libraries. As a librarian, a reader,a Harvard-Radcliffe grad, and a native old-time Yankee with a sense of proportion and of humor, I thank you for all of it. May LT live long and prosper and continue to evolve for the good of us all.
are we talking REAL books or just ISBNs cause once you start eliminating duplicate isbns tend to readjust.
We're talking volumes, not titles or "works." Harvard's is a volume count too—so it includes duplicates and multiple manifestations of the same work. But LibraryThing obviously has a lot more duplication than any library ever created. By ISBNs we have something like 2-2.5 million distinct ones.
T
Woo Hoo!
Milestone and a picnic in my area!
I've only just joined LT because I was told it was a lot of fun. Here's the proof!
See ya on the 28th!
I like the idea of donating ones collection to a physical LibraryThing building! It could be an open source thing where no one really owns it (well the whole community would) but is administered by paid staff.
Near the end mccarrick (at 6.29pm) said that bvs (at 4.26pm) is right about catalog size. So let's say we go ahead with an idea of an actual physical collection to be bigger than Harvard. Well it still would not quite work. LT books are probably only about 10% of Harvard's ISBNs. Harvard in case you forgot is a university! I have browsed on LibraryThing for a while and have yet to come across much non-fiction let alone academic books! Can you imagine everyday casual fiction readers coming onto LT and discussing any on of the hundreds of '-ologies'. I love reading a bit of psychology for self help and business but only Harvard nerds would have huge text books on engineering, biology, and even I don't know a thesis on development of maxilliofacial dental surgery techniques over the centuries to combat a specific type of dental diagnosis.
So in reality, the ISBNs of LT are mostly fiction and stories type where as Harvard is very different in not only range of factual works but depth.
Adamo Giovane.
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It is very interesting... Hoping to read more interesting article like this from you in the future...
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