The Book Lady’s Blog

A few weeks ago, George Palmer of 5ft Shelf contacted me to tell me about this project, inspired by Dr. Charles Eliot’s claim that one could achieve a liberal arts education by reading for fifteen minutes per day from a collection of books that could fit on a five-foot shelf.  Building on this concept and seeking to create a list of the modern classics (a project I find quite exciting), George and the team at 5ft Shelf have created a way for lovers of books, film, and music to catalog their essential libraries—their very own five-foot shelves—and receive customized recommendations. I liked the idea, so I invited them to tell us more about it. Please welcome George Palmer of 5ft Shelf.

The Harvard Classics are a list of books proposed by Dr Eliot, head of Harvard University in 1909, that could provide any person with a liberal education.  When I first heard of these 2 years ago, the idea fascinated me, and not long after I started to wonder what a modern equivalent would look like.  I did some research and was quite disappointed that I couldn’t find any such lists.  I thought no more of it though until a year later when I was freelancing and looking for a project I could work on between client work.  The idea came back to me and I started thinking about creating a website where people could vote for their all time favourite books.

Some months later and after much hard work I finally finished the project.  I decided to name the website 5ft Shelf after the original name for the books.  Dr Eliot often stated in speeches a liberal education could be achieved by reading a set books totaling no more than 3ft in width (when lined up on a shelf).  Eventually a local publisher challenged him to name the books and when he sat down to work out the contents, Dr Eliot realised he needed more space and decided to extend the claim to 5ft.  The books thus become known as Dr Eliots 5ft shelf (and later the Harvard Classics).

I also decide to slightly change the criteria for selection.  The original list was composed of just books and I decided, 100 years later, two new quintessential forms for modern living had emerged -music albums and movies.  Whilst books were the one of the major forms of entertainment 100 years ago I decide music and film had really come through as mediums.  I thought when I launched the site I would be challenged on this but surprisingly people have been very supportive of the decision.

The site launched about two weeks ago and whilst it has only been promoted to friends and family so far, there have already been some interesting results.  The concept of the site is people register and create their own personal 5ft Shelf.  The idea behind this is members can then share their shelves with others.  Whilst there’s no social network right now we’ve one planned shortly and we think it’ll be interesting to watch your friends add and remove items over time.  Of course the real point is to find a modern version of the Harvard Classics and we call this shelf (which we find by combining all users’ shelves and finding the most popular items) the Ultimate Shelf. Whilst Dr Eliot’s shelf was created by a definitive source (Dr Eliot and an assistant) we wanted the modern version to be a people’s version.  Although many of the initial testers on the site were computer friends of mine (and so there are a few computer books temporarily higher on the list than there normally would be), a lot of the books, albums and films that have emerged on the Ultimate Shelf are considered ‘modern classics’.

There are also a few other nice features that early users have raved about.  The first is mini-shelves.  For every book, album and film on the site we grab the category it belongs to from Amazon.  Mini-shelves are shelves of items belonging to just your chosen category.  So whether it’s cooking, golf or sport that you’re passionate about, then you can see the most popular items that fall into just that category on a shelf.  The other feature people have really enjoyed is recommendations.  Based on the items you add to your shelf we search for other people with similar items and see what they have on their shelves that you don’t.  We then recommend these to you as ideas for items you might like to think about in the future (plus we’ve provided a link straight through to Amazon if you want to buy the recommendation).

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I’ve been working on my 5ft Shelf, and let me tell you, it is more difficult than you might think. I’m in the habit of cataloging everything I read, and, like most of us, I have a mental list of favorites, classics, and those books I think everyone should have to read, but this is the first time I’ve really had to boil it down. 5ft Shelf is brand new, and the more people who use it, the better the recommendations—and the more accurate the list of modern classics—will become. So head over. Create your five-foot shelf. Challenge yourself to select your absolute favorites.

Connect with 5ft Shelf on Twitter, and check out their blog for the latest updates.