The Open Syllabus Project aggregates college syllabi and analyzes the data to provide a variety of ways to explore the data held within. Their stated goal is to provide “a platform for curricular exploration and research.” Through their Open Syllabus Explorer you can search and browse to discover which books appear in these syllabuses. They also rank the texts based on how frequently they are assigned, giving a “teaching score” to each one. There is only one text that has received their highest score — not surprisingly, The Elements of Style. Here are the top twenty, with links to WorldCat:
- The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White
- Republic by Plato
- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
- Biology by Neil Campbell
- Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Ethics by Aristotle
- Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
- The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
- Oedipus by Sophocles
- Hamlet by William Shakespeare
- The Odyssey by Homer
- Orientalism by Edward Said
- A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations by Kate Turabian
- The Illiad by Homer
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
- Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Antigone by Sophocles
- Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King, Jr.
- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
- The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn
Thanks for Thom Hickey for bringing this project to my attention.
Roy Tennant works on projects related to improving the technological infrastructure of libraries, museums, and archives.
