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FAST FACTS
C&RL News, March 2006
Vol. 67, No. 3
by Gary Pattillo
New book sales
At the Book Standard’s Summit 2005, Jim King, senior vice-president and general manager of Nielsen BookScan, noted that 93 percent of all ISBNs tracked by the company during 2004 sold less than 1,000 units. “Some 1.15 million ISBNs (often representing several editions of one book) accounted for 13 percent of all sales during 2004, and the remaining 7 percent of ISBNs accounted for 87 percent of sales, prompting King to suggest that in 2004 (...) the old 80/20 rule of 80 percent of sales coming from 20 percent of titles had become a 90/10 rule.” Over 20 new books are published every hour.
Shelf Awareness, September 26, 2005, Volume 1, Issue 58. http://news.shelf-awareness.com/nview.jsp?nohead=1&appid=411&j=49936 January30, 2006.
Translations
Although 450,000 new English-language titles were published in 2004, there were only 14,440 new translations in 2004, accounting for a little more than 3 percent of all new books available for sale. In the United States only 4,982 of those were available for sale, while Italy reported 12,197 new translations.
Bowker. “English-Speaking Countries Published 375,000 New Books Worldwide in 2004,” October 12, 2005. http://www.bowker.com/press/bowker/2005_1012_bowker.htm January 4, 2006.
Free full-text biomedicine journals
HighWire Press, a division of the Stanford University Libraries, develops and maintains the Web versions of journals in biomedicine and other disciplines. As of February 7, 2006, 1,167,933 free full-text articles are available. HighWire partners with scholarly societies, university presses and publishers to create fully searchable research and clinical literature online. According to their web site, the consortium produces 73 of the 200 most frequently cited journals in science.
HighWire Press. http://highwire.stanford.edu/ February 7, 2006
The Fourth International Conference on the Book
The Fourth International Conference on the Book will be held at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts October 20-22, 2006. Topics will include the past, present and future of publishing, libraries, information, literacy and learning in the information society. The overall theme for 2006 is access, diversity, and democracy. Select presentations will be published in the peer-reviewed journal, The International Journal of the Book.
International Conference on the Book. http://book-conference.com/ February 1, 2006.
Electronic Information for Libraries
eIFL.net is an independent foundation that strives to lead, negotiate, support and advocate for the wide availability of electronic resources by library users in developing countries. Its main focus is on negotiating affordable subscriptions on a multi-country consortial basis, while supporting the enhancement of emerging national library consortia in member countries. eIFL started in October 1999, as an initiative of the Open Society Institute, a private grant-making and operating foundation, part of the Soros Foundation network. Currently, eIFL serves a total population of approximately eight hundred million people through its work with over twenty-two hundred libraries in more than forty countries.
Electronic Information for Libraries. http://www.eifl.net/index.html January 30, 2006.
Gary Pattillo is reference librarian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, e-mail: pattillo@refstaff.lib.unc.edu
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