Children's books as present in libraries

The Online Computer Library Center is an organization helping link libraries and members together and to the vast repository of knowledge sitting on shelves. They did a study in 2005, identifying the 1,000 most commonly held titles in all their member organizations. I have identified all those on that list of 1,000 which are either explicitly children's books (such as Goodnight Moon) as well as those that are frequently read by children before they graduate high school even if they might nominally be adult books (Catcher in the Rye or Slaughterhouse Five for example). I have also included adult books which are frequently abridged and read by children such as the Odyssey, Iliad, some of the more popular Shakespeare plays, Pilgrim's Progress and the like.

Of the 1,000 most commonly held titles, the Bible is, not unexpectedly, the most commonly held book amongst all libraries, with more than twice as many libraries holding it over the next most commonly held book which is, intriguingly, the US Census. Mother Goose is the third most commonly held book.

This is an interesting list because it reflects both what librarians think ought to be in a library as well as, presumably, what is being demanded. It would be interesting to see the circulation numbers for these titles. I assume that in any given year the top of the charts would be dominated by whatever was being promoted by publishers that year, or had become a fad or was in the process of being made into a movie. Over a decade though, I suspect that the cumulative circs would generate a list very close to what follows.

Another observation; children's books represent 29% of the total titles on the list. However, when you look at the number of copies held by the libraries, children's books come in at 52% of all the books cited (59% if you exclude the Bible from the base).

Following are the twenty-five top children's books:

Mother Goose
Odyssey by Homer
Iliad by Homer
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
Beowulf
Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore

Garfield by Jim Davis
Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

Aesop's Fables by Aesop

Arabian Nights

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
King Lear by William Shakespeare
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Other members on the list include Wizard of Oz (#54), Little Women (#62), Peanuts (#69), and Goodnight Moon (#363). Let me know if you are interested in seeing the whole list.