5ft shelf

About 5ft Shelf

In 1909 Dr Eliot, then President of Harvard University, claimed a liberal education could be achieved by reading a collection of books that would total no more than 5ft in width. A local publisher challenged him to name them and he responded with what became known as the Harvard Classics.

Shifting forward 100 years and into the age of the internet, we're trying to find out what the modern equivalent would be.  A lot has happened in the last century and we felt it would be impossible to get a fair representation of people’s interests without introducing two quintessential formats for modern living—music albums and movies.

Rather than use a single authoritative source for the modern shelf, we've taken the opposite approach by allowing users to create their own shelf. We then combine all these shelves to find the most popular items and create our top 5ft shelf ("the ultimate shelf"). This is updated every day and can be found on the home page behind this box.