Correction:
Seven Public Libraries have 'The Road to Serfdom'

J. Edward Pawlick
June 6, 2002

We are indebted to reader David Taylor for alertly advising us that seven public libraries in the Minuteman Network have "The Road to Serfdom" available on their shelves, not zero as we reported.

This caused us to revisit all of our counts once again.

The towns that have "Serfdom" are Arlington, Cambridge, Concord, Dedham, Needham, Waltham and Wellesley.

However, this does not affect the basic conclusions.

After our recount, the most liberal towns still have the worst record of censorship. The town of Lexington still has only one of the 11 basic conservative classics and Brookline still has only two. Arlington jumps from three to four. Waltham goes from three to four. Watertown remains at four and Newton remains at five.

Wellesley remains as the most diverse library, now with nine of the eleven classic books.

(We count only print copies of books that are available, not ones in storage which can not be accessed, which is true for Lexington. We also do not count books that are lost, books in foreign languages or tape recordings. Brookline and Newton have a tape recording. Newton also has a Chinese translation and an English copy that is lost and not available.)

For some reason, Mr. Taylor also made a miscount. He missed the copy of "Serfdom" that is in the Waltham library. There are ten records on the Minuteman Internet site for "Serfdom." Waltham is listed on Record #5.

Our recount also showed that we shortchanged two libraries in our original story. Arlington had three books (which now increases to four when "Serfdom" is added) and Dean College had one, not zero (which remains at one because it does not have "Serfdom.")

Four of the colleges in the Minuteman Network also have "Serfdom." They are Framingham State (which brings its total to four of the eleven classics), Lasell (which brings it to three), Mount Ida (up to four) and MassBay (up to five).

If any other reader has other questions on our counts, we would appreciate hearing from you.

For you mathematicians who wonder why, if Mr. Taylor found seven libraries which have Serfdom and he missed Waltham, why doesn't the number of libraries which have it total eight? The answer is quite simple. He included Newton in his count but we do not include that library because its copy is "lost" and has not been replaced. There is no copy available for any patron.