Change the numbers for a certain category, either by clicking the small arrows to the right of the box or manually enter an amount in the box. When you manually enter a set of values, hit the button at the bottom to re-sort the list.
Add new categories by clicking on Add New Category and navigating through the menu. Remove categories by clicking on the small black button next to the category title. This will reset the category to 0. Wash, rinse, repeat.
| 4 | Work is widely available and is of continued academic interest, and is undisputedly important. |
| 3 | Work is widely available, is of continued academic interest, but not quite a 4. |
| 2 | More recent works of growing importance, or older works of diminishing importance |
| 1 | Works of slightly more interest than the heaps of pulp out there. |
| 0 | Zero |
The more known categories a book falls into, the more the canon score is lowered, because the more you know about a book, the easier it is to determine where it should go on the list, depending on how you handicap the categories.
If you remove all of the default categories, you can get an idea of how I have ranked the topmost books.
You can view the data file here. It is in XML.
Books are listed with the American title, e.g. The Stranger and not The Outsider.
"Foreign author" refers to authors not from the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, or Australia. Not the most precise category, but accurate enough when talking about the last century.
The book list is still a work in progress. I am not familiar with many of the books there, so if you have information that would help classify a book, let me know.The interface, what little that exists, is also a work in progress.
Questions, comments, corrections, suggestions: shoehorn@antimodal.com