Comments on: Can I just say “a whole bunch?”

By: Gwen

Gwen — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:51:27 +0000

Always an interesting question. Even some of the librarian surveys we get don’t specify what we should be counting. I lean toward giving the bigger number that reflects everything we have access to, since I think that access is what people really want.
BUT maybe we could think of some interesting other ways to measure and give people when they ask… like the linear feet of books on the shelf? Or the total weight of the library collections?

By: How Big Is My Library?

How Big Is My Library? — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:47:19 +0000

[...] been mulling over Steve’s latest post about some of the ways in which knowing the number of books in your library is either impossible or [...]

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:56:05 +0000

Oh Carol, how I miss you. Hypothetically, of course.

And when I’m not feeling cranky (like now) I agree with everything in your second paragraph.

By: carol o

carol o — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 15:36:08 +0000

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you didn’t actually have any individual EEBO records in your catalog and the ECCO records numbered something like 180k or so. The 120k difference could be made up by some other ebook packages (like say, a hefty Springer one) as well as normal physical book growth. Hypothetically. I would get your colleague to substantiate that 800k number though.

I would agree that actually giving a (ballpark) number is better than saying “a lot”.. and not just because saying “a lot” sounds like you’re avoiding the question. And I think the number does have some vague meaning to people, if only in the comparative sense. If I can use a beer analogy, I think it’s kind of like when you have a bar that has 3 beers on tap vs. a bar that has 30 beers on tap. Sure, those 3 beers might be your all-time favorite beers, but if you knew nothing about either bar going in, which bar would you guess would be more likely to have the beers you want? Or expose you to new interesting beers you never even knew existed?

By: Jessy

Jessy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:22:32 +0000

Laura, I totally agree. I know that when tours come through, the parents (it’s always the parents) love to ask “How many books do you have?” without really understanding the answer. And the tour guides probably don’t have a real sense of what a half-million volume library is compared to a 12-million volume library. I don’t think I ever claimed, to Steve, that this was vital information to tours. But I do think it’s important, and some people do understand it.

The particular research I wanted the bigger libraries for, in case anyone is interested, was a comparison, since abandoned, of the way Elizabeth Blackwell’s many biographers handle her disinterest in marriage. (Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman doctor.) You’d need a pretty big library to be able to get ALL the biographies. Tutt has three. Harvard has forty.

By: laura

laura — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:48:42 +0000

When I was touring colleges (colleges very similar to yours), a statistic of how many volumes were in the library was a standard part of every tour, and it never meant anything to me, even back then when, for the most part, those volumes were actual physical volumes on the shelf. I look at the number of volumes (books, movies, etc.) in my library quite frequently, because it amuses me, when people come in saying they want a book, to say, “well, we have about 23,000 of them.” I don’t expect that that means much to them, though.

But there is, as you note, a qualitative difference between thousands of volumes and millions of volumes, in somewhat the same way that there’s a difference between the text of, say, the New York Times from 1960 and the actual paper, or scans of the pages. But I’m not sure that any of those distinctions are really clear to the average high school senior out on a college tour.