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The Chicago Public Library is the world's largest public library with a collection of more than 2 million books.

If it only had 2 million, it wouldn't even make the top 30 public libraries. At 8.1 million, it's number 3 on the list.

New York Public Library ..........11,445,971
Queen's Borough Public Library ..........9,237,300
Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public ..........8,582,637
Chicago Public Library ..........8,100,000

Data source http://www.libraryspot.com/lists/listlargestlibs.htm

First of all, I correctly guessed the one you would go after. =D

That said, according to MSN Encarta the Chicago Public Library is third for all U.S. Libraries. Because, the Library of Congress and Harvard University libraries are statistically ranked by the Association of Research Libraries and Chicago is ranked by Public Library Data Service, Chicago considers itself the largest.

Thus you get the following ranking. Largest U.S. Libraries

I checked some other listings (including yours) and the rankings are all over the map. It's a conspiracy.