Shakespeare and Company Members Lollipop Chart

This is a two variable, three dimensional lollipop chart showing the membership of the Shakespeare and Company library by month and year, from November 1919 when Sylvia Beach opened her bookstore to its official closing in 1942. Membership data is drawn from two different sources, both of which are incomplete: broad subscription information comes from logbooks (although logbooks for 1930 and parts of 1931-32 are missing); detailed borrowing histories come from lending library cards for a subset of members. The white represents the number of members with an active subscription in each month; the green corresponds to the number of members with borrowing activity in each month. For any month where the value is zero, there is no lollipop. Representing the two different datasets as adjacent half lollipops exposes the discrepancies between the stories these sources tell us about the membership of the library without privileging either of them.