Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
Anyone who uses the Library of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters more than briefly will soon discover that its staff has a thing for page 17. Every book in that excellent library carries a stamp of ownership on that page.
Last night I was reading Frans G. Bengtsson's 1947 essay collection För nöjes skull. A bit into his piece about Fagertärn, the little lake near Stjernsund whence the red pond liles once came, I found the stamp of the Saltsjöbaden Municipal Library -- on page 17.
Is this secret tradition among librarians restricted to Sweden? To libraries of the 1940s and ones of today with long traditions? Dear Reader, please check any library books you have at hand, and if there's an ownership stamp on page 17, tell us the name and location of the library.
Update 27 March: The page 17 thing must be pretty widespread. Only in the past three hours, at least three people have arrived here after googling "library stamp p. 17", "why libraries stamp on page 17" and "book stamp p. 17". Too bad they aren't commenting.
[More blog entries about libraries, books; bibliotek, böcker.]
Information Science
Comments
The first page of the second "signature" (the group of pages formed by a single sheet)? Or is it always the page with 17 on it, no matter how things are paginated?
Posted by: Fredrik | March 16, 2010 8:46 AM
Aha! That's a good theory for how the custom originated. Maybe it was once a precaution for the eventuality that the first bunch of leaves might fall off. But the libraries I mentioned stamp the page numbered 17.
Posted by: Martin R | March 16, 2010 9:08 AM
My understanding is that libraries place the ownership stamp on an inside page to discourage theft, on the assumption that (1) it's harder to locate if one is trying to remove it in a hurry, and (2) it's a disincentive to tear out the page, since it's got text that the thief presumably wants to read.
Posted by: Martin | March 16, 2010 10:11 AM
Fall off, or be forcibly removed (at least partially). As the second Martin points out, you don't want to put the stamp too early in the book, since it makes it a lot more likely that someone can cut out a page without anyone noticing.
And with 16-page signatures, the page marked 17 is indeed guaranteed not to be in the first bunch no matter how much "preamble" the book has.
And finally, having it on the same page makes it easier for the librarians to find it, of course.
Posted by: Fredrik | March 16, 2010 10:41 AM
I have a few ex-library books on my shelves, all from local British libraries. They all have the ownership stamp on the title page! Nothing on page 17 or the 17th page. Shame.
Posted by: Gazman | March 16, 2010 11:17 AM
As a retired librarian in the US, I'm aware of several libraries that stamped a specific internal page of books, but none that used page 17. One public library stamped page 50, and a medical association library stamped page 42.
Posted by: chezjake | March 16, 2010 11:30 AM
Never heard of stamping a specific page before, and I never saw anything like that at KB. Libraries often come up with variations on the same theme, a mass of similar but ultimately different administrative procedures; I like it when libraries have their own funny little quirks.
Posted by: Nick Williams | March 16, 2010 3:59 PM
I once interviewed for a cataloguing post at Cambridge University Library, and there they explained the 'procedure' as, more or less, stamp the title page, any maps and a few places in the text at random. So, the nearest UL book I have to hand today duly has a stamp on the title page, the last page of the index and on p. 115. There may be others, I stopped paging once I found one... But I'll bet some places have had tighter procedures than that, and if so, binding does mean that 17 would be a good page to pick.
Posted by: Jonathan Jarrett | March 16, 2010 6:46 PM
In computer science lore, 17 is a traditional "random" number, as in "Let's consider a random value, say, 17. Now, if we plug 17 into ...". It's a convenient exemplar since it's prime, and small but still large enough to be useful in examples of an algorithm.
I wonder what libraries do with publications less than 17 pages in length?
Posted by: Janne | March 16, 2010 8:49 PM
In the 60s and 70s the New York City Board of Education used page 51 in textbooks and library books for the ownership stamp. The reason was theft reduction and tracing. I noticed that 51 is 3 x 17, but I doubt it's because things were three times worse in NYC. My mother was a school teacher. She said it was sort of a trade secret. A professional thief might know about it, if it were worthwhile, but most thieves were the casual sort, and page 51 would serve as evidence. (Used bookstores, for example, would look for stamps there and refuse to fence them.)
Posted by: Kaleberg | March 16, 2010 9:16 PM
I wonder what libraries do with publications less than 17 pages in length?
I think the librarian stares at them for a while, then madly stamps the space on his desk immediately to the right of the publication, and finally lies down with a migraine.
Posted by: Martin R | March 17, 2010 3:41 AM
If I don't mistake, all Helsinki University libraries have traditionally stamped on page 66 - or 33, if there aren't 66 pages existing. In the case of still thinner booklets I should make some further observations but page 16 or 17 might be possible.
Posted by: Timo S | March 17, 2010 12:06 PM
Mini-survey of two books, bought-off of my city-district library (Berlin-Friedrichshain, btw): ownership stamps (blue) on the inner title - plus red stamps for the sell-off, and on p. 19 second blue stamp.
Posted by: wereatheist | March 17, 2010 4:42 PM
We used 46 as the "secret page" when I was a student working in the school library. Small town, rural Ohio, in the 1960's. That seems to be a tradition with legs.
Posted by: mike shupp | March 17, 2010 10:13 PM
Never heard of stamping a specific page before, and I never saw anything like that at KB.
Posted by: links of london | March 18, 2010 5:02 AM
Oh yeah. My dad did it too, used page 25 for exactly the same reason as already mentioned here: title page can be ripped out without any "harm" to the content and perhaps no one noticing it, but page 25...
I have thus taken up this tradition...
Posted by: Bruno | March 18, 2010 9:07 AM
I'm from Sri Lanka and we also have this tradition: pages 19, 119, 219, so on... We have both seal and the accession number. Really enjoyed your discussion and acquired some insight too.
Posted by: Dr. Ruwan Gamage | November 27, 2010 2:52 AM