Hungry for knowledge? Here are the top 10 most borrowed books at the Vancouver Public Library
Credit to Author: Stephanie Ip| Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 19:19:45 +0000
The New York Public Library recently celebrated its 125th anniversary with a list of its top 10 most checked-out books in NYPL history.
It wasn’t an easy feat. The list required librarians and analysts spend more than six months looking up every title in its catalogue to see how many times each one had been borrowed. Circulation data, best-seller lists, archives and awards were all crunched to help determine its Top 10 list.
While the Vancouver Public Library’s catalogue is not quite as large as the NYPL’s — Vancouver has about 9.5 million physical and digital items available for loan compared to the NYPL’s 55 million — its history is still extensive.
It got us thinking: what are the most checked-out books in Vancouver?
But first, a few notes. Because the VPL only started being able to track circulation numbers by title beginning in 2004, the list they provided only covers borrowing that took place in the past 16 years. The VPL’s ebooks OverDrive collection launched in 2012, so the ebooks and audiobooks list only covers the past seven years.
So what’s the top print fiction or non-fiction title being borrowed by Vancouverites? Drum roll please: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The original English language title has been checked out a total of 10,793 times in the past decade and a half.
The childhood classic was first published in 1969 and stars a very hungry caterpillar who eats his way through an apple, two pears, three plums, four strawberries, five oranges, a lot of sweets and desserts before eating a green leaf, suffering a stomach ache and – finally! – turning into a butterfly.
• 34 copies in English
• 50 English copies on order
• 38 copies total in 12 additional languages
• 123 copies of five other titles in the Hungry Caterpillar series
“I think it is a pattern that we quite often see in top book lists, that these children’s books and picture books float to the surface because they do have that popularity over time,” said Kay Cahill, the VPL’s director of collections and technology.
“You know, you grow up with these stories and then people go back to them, they introduce them to their own children and the cycle just continues.”
Even in 1937, news clippings show that children’s favourites at the time were classics: Treasure Island, The Swiss Family Robinson, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Little Women, Peter Pan and King Arthur.
Meanwhile popular adult picks followed the news and topics of the day and while there’s no shortage of adult literary classics, they don’t always generate the same consistent high interest over time, said Cahill.
The rest of the VPL’s print list is dominated by two series: Harry Potter, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Not surprising, as both were popular children’s titles and have been adapted to the screen, sparking renewed interest.
The VPL has not been shy about capitalizing on the popularity of Harry Potter to draw people to the library. Over the summer, the VPL hosted a Harry Potter-themed escape room that booked out almost immediately, with more than 100 adults and 40 teens participating over the course of the project.
“I want to give all the credit for this one to our teen librarians because they’re the ones who developed that program and just did an amazing job with it,” said Cahill. “Every Harry Potter program that we’ve run has been really popular.”
As for ebooks and audiobooks, it’s unsurprising that almost all of the 10 listed titles are those that have appeared on screen. The library has frequently seen a bump in borrowing numbers for certain titles that are adapted to film or TV, such as Little Women which recently had another film adaptation premier in theatres.
Regardless of why people come to the library, Cahill points out that despite screens and apps, a book is still the one thing that doesn’t change.
“I’ve been working in public libraries for 25 years at this point and the world has changed so much in that time,” said Cahill. “Kids now have all these cool tools they can use, you see them very engaged in their phones, their iPads and in the middle of that, you still see them in the library with a book.
“There is still that love of coming in and taking a physical book out and just disappearing into a different world. I just find it a really great thing that in a world that is changing very rapidly, something that has stayed the same is that comfort and enjoyment of reading.”
Fiction and non-fiction:
1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
2. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
4. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney
6. Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone by J.K. Rowling
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney
8. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
9. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
10. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Third Wheel by Jeff Kinney
1. The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
2. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
3. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
5. Crazy Rich Asians (book 1) by Kevin Kwan
6. Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
7. All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doer
8. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
9. The Martian by Andy Weir
10. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty