Thursday, February 25, 2010

Most Popular Book

A few days ago, while I was working at the library, I was wondering what the most popular book was. Which book at BYU's library gets checked out the most? After work I asked the student at the circulation desk if she knew the answer, and she said she didn't. I then asked her if she knew someone who could tell me, and she said again that she didn't. Hmm. Dead end. I asked my supervisor at work the next day if she knew who to talk to, and she thought about it and said for me to talk to this one guy down the hall from where I work. I walked over to his desk and asked him my question, and he told me that I needed to talk to someone else. I quickly walked down to this other guy's office and he told me he could run a query and get back to me in a few minutes.

Every single person I talked to asked me why I wanted to know. I just told them I was curious. They seemed to either be impressed by this or put off by it. One of the people I spoke to told me, "Well, curiosity killed the cat," and then just stared at me. I kind of chuckled a little a bit and said, "Yeah...heh heh." It was weird.

Can you guess what the most popular book is at BYU? I thought it would be maybe the Book of Mormon, or maybe some textbook on reserve. Then I thought it might be one of the Harry Potter books, maybe the 7th one. Or perhaps it was some popular classic novel, like To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Grapes of Wrath.

It turns out that the most checked out book in the entire history of BYU is ... Twilight. Yes, you read that right. Kind of disappointing, isn't it? BYU received its first copy of Twilight in October 2005, and since then it has been checked out over 5,000 times. The amazing thing is that there have only been about 1,600 days since then.  The library owns over seven copies of the book in its Juvenile section alone, and then on top of that we have copies in Sampler, Literature, and Americana.

6 comments:

Kathy Haynie said...

This confirms that I am NOT one of the popular kids. Still haven't read Twilight...don't think I'm planning to...although did you know that one of the scenes from the film was shot here in Oregon City? We'll take you to the location when you come visit, if you want to see it.

Kristen said...

I am sort of disappointed...Twilight?!? I mean, I've read them, but I would have guessed something classic.

Katie Lewis said...

Lame, lame, lame. BYU readers, you disappoint me.

ali said...

yeahhhh man!!!!!

Lisa Lou said...

Well, that doesn't surprise me. What I AM disappointed about is that fact that you had to run all over the BYU Library to find the answer to a seemingly simple query! For shame.

Raymond Teodo a.k.a. was_bedeutet_jemanden said...

Bet you're almost disappointed now, going through all that trouble just to find THAT out.... :-P