[eno_]

I think you are on to something. It would take an army of scribes hundreds of years to create that many books. How did they all get there? Where did they all go? Antiquarian booksellers would be up to their armpits in ancient Islamic works if this were true.

That's about 40,000 linear feet of books. 8000 square feet stacked 5 feet high. Just barely plausible as the collection of a fairly large modern city library. The entire Harvard University library system - largest in the world - contains a bit more than 3 million volumes. John Harvard started the university's library with 400 books. Well golly, them wogs must have been a thousand times more well read.

I smell an innumerate journalist who doesn't know when to say "Now pull the other one."

[eno_]

Correction: Widener is 3.2M volumes. All 90 or so libraries in the Harvard system house 13M volumes, an average of about 120,000 per library.