Library lending figures: which books are most popular?
|
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2013/feb/08/library-lending-figures-books-most-popular Version 0 of 1. How many people are borrowing books from UK libraries? And what are the most popular titles and authors? Thanks to the latest book lending data from the Public Lending Right (PLR), which manages payments to authors, we now have an insight into the nation's favourite books. Best-selling author James Patterson charges ahead with more than 2.4m loans. The best-selling writer is the most borrowed author, his book 10th Anniversay (co-written with Maxine Paetro) tops the list of most borrowed books and he makes 15 appearances in the top 100 most borrowed titles list. Not bad. John Dugdale writes today: A quick glance at the chart will show that the emphatic answers are no, no and no: not only is the Fifty Shades trilogy not at the top, it's nowhere – as are last year's other erotica hits. As a result, the borrowings table looks more blokeish and less sexy than the all-2012 sales chart, where the top 10 was female-dominated: overall, 65 of the authors of the 100 most-borrowed books are men. <br />The most borrowed children's author in 2011-12 according to PLR was Daisy Meadows with over 1m loans. The most borrowed children's title though was the Grufallo by Julia Donaldson followed by Aliens Love Underpants! by Claire Freedman & Ben Cort. Bill Bryson heads the non-fiction titles with his book At Home: An Informal History of Private Life. Madeleine by Kate McCann and Jamie's 30-Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver make up the top three. It appears the popularity of Downton Abbey has spread to the UK's libraries; The World of Downtown Abbey by Jessica Fellowes was the most borrowed television book in 2011/12. Last year marked the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, so it's interesting to take a look at PLR's list of the most borrowed novels by the famous author. The most borrowed Dickens titles in 201//12 were: 1. A Tale of Two Cities<br />2. Great Expectations <br />3. Hard Times<br />4. Bleak House<br />5. Oliver Twist PLR have also provided us with an interesting breakdown of the borrowing habits of a decade. Here are some of the UK library chart toppers from 2002-12: • It won't come as a big suprise but James Patterson is the UK's most borrowed author of the decade with more than 2m loans in each of the last three years<br />• Jacqueline Wilson is the UK's most borrowed children's author of the decade. The Story of Tracy Beaker by Wilson is also crowned the most borrowed book of the decade as well as the UK's most borrowed children's fiction book<br />• The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is the most borrowed adult fiction book of the decade<br />• Danielle Steel has featured in the UK's Most Borrowed Authors Top 10 every single year from 1992-2012<br />• A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer is the most borrowed biography of the decade<br />• Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare are the most borrowed pre-20th century classic authors of the decade<br />• James Patterson, Jacqueline Wilson, Danielle Steel and Josephine Cox have all clocked up more than 10m library loans between 2002 and 2012 The tables below show the top 100 most borrowed books in the UK and the top loaned authors. You can find top loans by category and most borrowed book by UK region in the spreadsheet. What can you do with this data? Data summary 100 MOST BORROWED BOOKS 2011/2012 Click heading to sort <strong> </strong> MOST BORROWED AUTHORS 2011/2012 Click heading to sort <strong> </strong> Download the data • DATA: download the full spreadsheet • <strong>SOURCE: PLR</strong> NEW! Buy our book • Facts are Sacred: the power of data (on Kindle) More open data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world's government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • <strong>Flickr</strong> Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group<br />• Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk <strong>• Get the A-Z of data<br />• More at the Datastore directory</strong><br /><strong>• Follow us on Twitter<br />• Like us on Facebook</strong> |