Always we were trying to balance quality and popularity and usefulness. But then, of course, those definitions change, depending on how you see your collection and your audience. Started in 1926, the catalog remains the standard core list of titles for high-school libraries. It's now revised every five years, and paperbound supplements are published annually in the four intervening years. The entries are in Dewey Decimal order, and each includes full bibliographic information, a brief descriptive note, and, sometimes, excerpts from reviews.
Librarians also cite the catalog in censorship challenges.
Why the Caged Bird Sings to Nancy Garden's Annie on My Mind. Silas Marner has been there forever, probably since the first edition of the catalog was published in 1926. Yet there have been some astonishing omissions. Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street , first published in 1984, now regarded as a classic and widely recommended in high schools, never made it into the catalog. We nominated both titles this time.