Chicago Public Library Best of the Best

About the Chicago Public Library Best of the Best

Lists come from CPL's yearly Best of the Best pages on chipublib.org (2014-2025), which link to staff lists on chipublib.bibliocommons.com; titles and authors were read from those BiblioCommons lists. Year is the year in the list name, which is the publication year of the books. Category is the BiblioCommons list name with the year removed (for example "Best Teen Fiction", "Best Books: Top Ten", "Must-Read Books: Fiction"). From 2023 the adult picks are "Our Favorite Books" plus genre "Must-Read Books" lists, all linked from the Best of the Best page. Top 10 lists repeat titles from the full adult list; both are kept as separate categories. For 2007-2013 there is no CPL year page that is still live; we used CPL's own BiblioCommons lists in the same series (teen fiction 2007-2013, teen nonfiction 2008, kids lists 2010-2013). For 2009 kids lists we used the archived chipublib.org Best of the Best page via Wayback; CPL titled that page "Best of the Best 2010" but it covers books of 2009, so it is filed as 2009, and its section names were mapped to the BiblioCommons style ("Picture Books" to "Best Picture Books", "Nonfiction" to "Best Nonfiction"). Award-winner, NatureConnections and Healthy Living sections were left out. 2006 is left out because no archived list for books of 2006 was found. Adult lists from 2013 and earlier were left out because they compile outside sources, not CPL picks. Authors are the catalog's main author put in first-last order; editors are used for anthologies. Translators are filled only for a few titles where the CPL catalog record credits one, so most translated books lack a translator. Where one list names two books from the same series (e.g. Ty's Travels: All Aboard! and Ty's Travels: Zip, Zoom!), the series and book title are joined with a dash so the catalog keeps them apart; catalog series tags such as "(I can read book, Book None)" are dropped.

Organization: Chicago Public Library. Official site (opens in a new tab)