Page 7 - DLIS101_LIBRARY_AND_INFORMATION_SOCIETY

Library and Information Society
Notes
2 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
Klopfer commissioned in 1925 from Lucian Bernhard. The Promethean bearer of enlightenment
was redesigned several times over the years, most notably by Rockwell Kent.
In 1998, novelist David Ebershoff became the Modern Library’s new Publishing Director. Ebershoff
ran the imprint until 2005, stepping down to concentrate on his own writing and to become editor-
at-large at Random House.
In September 2000, the Modern Library launched a newly designed Paperback Classics series. Six
new titles are published in the series on the second Tuesday of each month.
Self Assessment
Fill in the blanks:
1. In the year ......, novelist David Ebershoff became the modern librarie’s new publishing
director.
2. The ......, is a publishing company founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright.
3. In the year ......, the modern library launched a newly designed paperback classics series.
1.1 Modern Library
The Modern Library identified itself at its onset as “The Modern Library of the World’s Best Books”.
In trying to keep with that identity, in 1998 they made a list of 100 novels called “Modern Library List
of Best 20th-Century Novels”; an unscientific web poll to gather public opinion on the same was also
conducted. The list was actually restricted to works in English, but the title of the list was not modified
to reflect this, and little attention was paid to the fact in publicity for the list. The top ten books from
both lists in each category are shown below. According to an article about the list in the New York
Times, Executives at Random House said they hoped that as the century drew to a close their list
would encourage public debate about the greatest works of fiction of the last hundred years, thus
both increasing awareness of the Modern Library and stimulating sales of novels the group publishes.
The lists have drawn heavy criticism. Their ranking system concerned many professional scholars
and critics. The board members themselves, who did not create the rankings and were unaware of
it until the list was published, expressed disappointment and puzzlement. There are only eight or
nine women on the list, some highly influential works are ranked below works of questionable
literary merit, and the works of major writers from many English-speaking countries apart from the
USA and England - such as Australia, India, Canada, Sri Lanka and South Africa-have been ignored.
There were also hypotheses that the Modern Library merely made a selection based on its stock list.
The list was compiled via approval voting, by sending each board member a list of 440 pre-selected
books from the Modern Library catalogue and asking each member to place a check beside novels
they wished to choose. Then the works with the most votes were ranked the highest, and ties were
broken arbitrarily by Random House publishers. This explains surprising results like the #5
placement of Brave New World, which most of the judges agreed belonged somewhere on the list,
but much lower than the very top.
David Ebershoff, the Modern Library division’s publishing director, stated in a follow-up “the people
who were drawn to go to the Modern Library Web site and compelled to vote have a certain
enthusiasm about books and their favourite books that many people don’t, so that the voting
population is skewed.” In addition, people were allowed to vote repeatedly, once per day, making
the poll a measure of how much effort people would put into promoting their favorite books. Others
have been more direct in their descriptions of the results; librarian Robert Teeter remarks that the
ballot boxes were “stuffed by cultists.”