If you are interested in writing, there’s a good chance you enjoy reading and have multiple bookshelves as well as a ton of eBooks just waiting until you have time. You are also undoubtedly aware that people read more in some places than in others, and that eBooks weren’t common in 2000, when Grantville went back in time. People in West Virginia read less than people in other states. People in Marion County (where Grantville would be located, if it were real) read less, on average, than people in most of West Virginia. There are many Danielle Steele novels in Grantville. If you want to have something that isn’t a massive bestseller pre-Ring of Fire, you need to justify how it was in Grantville. One way to do that is to look at what is available in the public libraries there. More than twenty years after 2000, the collection will have changed more than a small amount, but it’s still the best place to make your case.
Public Libraries
Grantville has a public library, and each of the schools (high, middle, and elementary) has its own library. These libraries are modeled on those of Mannington, West Virginia, and if you can prove that one of the Mannington’s libraries had a particular book before May, 2000, then editors will assume that the comparable library in Grantville had it, too.
There are two resources available for searching the holdings of these libraries. First, there is the MARLO website (http://marlo.fairmontstate.edu/).
This provides the combined catalog of the library holdings of Fairmont State, Glenville State, the Marion County Public Libraries, and the Marion County Public School Libraries. There is a drop-down box by which you can limit the search to a particular library, of which the following are of interest:
- Mannington Public Library
- North Marion High School
- Mannington Middle School
- Blackshere Elementary School
Unfortunately, we know that at least the Mannington Middle School data is woefully incomplete. Fortunately, we have a second resource, at least for science and technology books. That’s the Mannington Middle School Library Booklist, 1632.middleschool.all, compiled from photographs taken a few years ago.
You will note that the photo-based booklist shows two field guides to minerals even though a MARLO search on “minerals” won’t find either of them at MMS.
Encyclopedias
The libraries (and private citizens) have all sorts of encyclopedias. Remember: this is before smart phones, high speed internet, and CDs/DVDs filled with hundreds of issues of magazines.
There are two sites for accessing the famous 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica:
You can also find the 1911 Encyclopedia on CDROM.
We also have a 2005 FAQ article summarizing Britannica resources.
The modern Encyclopedia Britannica is at http://www.britannica.com/ but that is a subscription site.
The Encyclopedia Americana may be available through the database access page of your local library. At least, that’s how I find it.
You may be able to access the World Book Encyclopedia and the Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia the same way.
The single volume Columbia Encyclopedia is another useful tool for research.
How Many Books?
For an estimate of the number of books, and a discussion of the speed with which they can be copied and translated, see Cooper, “My Name Is Legion: Copying the Books of Grantville” (Grantville Gazette 12).
Mannington Middle School
These photos show the shelves in the science and technology section of the Mannington Middle School Library (Dewey 500s and 600s). Each thumbnail links to a page showing a larger picture of the bookcase and a tabular listing of the books in the picture.
photos by Iver Cooper
Iver Cooper, the photographer and editor for this middle school library catalogue project, would like to thank his “photo analysts” for their assistance. These were John Bogan, Jill Cochran, Robert Mitchell and Kerryn Offord.
Only the circulating books in the 500 and 600 (i.e., math, science and technology) sections of the middle school library were catalogued. The photos were taken handheld, with flash illumination. Some books can’t be read because of flash burn, others because they stick in or out and are thus outside the plane of focus. Of course, if the book is turned so the spine is away from the camera, that doesn’t help, either.
The only “required” information for the catalogue was author and title (if readable). Some analysts provided additional information (publisher, year, physical description of the book) and, if it were submitted, it was included. The publisher information may have been on the spine of the book, or it may have been determined by checking the known author and title against the library of congress catalog. If a year is given, you can be sure that it was “looked up.”
Dewey Decimal numbers were unreadable. Thus, as a means of reference, the books have been labeled with a bookcase number (same as my photo number), a shelf number, and a place number (on the shelf).
The photo analysts examined compressed versions of the original photos, and in some cases, it may be possible to determine a title by inspecting the original. In addition, there is some overlap between photos, and a book which is unreadable in one may be readable in another.