>> 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?
>>
>
>
>
There is at least one standard for "counting things" in libraries, the
one used for the ARL statistics:
http://www.arl.org/stats/annualsurveys/arlstats/08statmail.shtml
There's also the federal program at
http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/. Most state libraries gather
statistics on libraries in their state. Here's the California one, and
it links to other stats. http://www.library.ca.gov/lds/librarystats.html
Now, these are the formal data gathering measures, but I would bet that
many librarians, when speaking of titles, are close to these measures,
which eliminate duplicate copies, and count multi-volume works as a
single title. The counting for serials, of course, is much more complex,
and library counts today include many music or film "instances."
I don't think in general that the concept is all that mysterious, except
to say that it is at the FRBR Manifestation level -- so two different
published versions of Moby Dick, albeit nearly identical in content, are
two titles. (Generally, manuscripts are counted separately, and I don't
know if they are included in the title count, but reading the rules
above should clear that up.) Libraries do NOT count FRBR Expressions or
Works, and I don't know if they ever will. It depends on whether those
measures help define the library quantitatively for some purpose.
kc
--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Tue Feb 17 2009 - 09:38:56 EST