> Yeah, but what does the average librarian *mean* when they say "we
> have 30,000 titles"? They're calculating it somehow. There must be
> some agreement. For one thing, lots of technology products are priced
> based on how many titles a library has. Often they get that pricing
> from public documents the librarians submit to their state or
> whatever, filling in some box that says "number of titles." What are
> they considering a title there?
Again, different libraries will consider these things in different ways. The Encyclopedia Britannica is one title, but has several volumes. This is simple. But there may be other publications that come out in a series (Little golden books) and one library may catalog each one separately, while another has different needs, or fewer resources, and catalogs them all under the single title "Little golden books" (v. 1, v. 2, v. 3, etc.).
Normally, you have number of titles, plus the number of physical volumes (or even pieces). And as I mentioned before, some libraries may follow one set of rules that says that something with the same title/edition/pub date/series but with "slightly different" number of pages is a copy (one title) while another decides that any difference in paging constitutes a new edition (title).
It's not a science, but I guess people figure that it all more or less comes together in the end.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Tue Feb 17 2009 - 04:02:12 EST