Google , who ’s been determinedly digitalise the world ’s books , think it might be prudent to figure out just how many books are in reality out there to begin with . They made a special algorithm , natch , and came up with 129,864,880 .
This post onInside Google Books blogexplains the whole process . First , you have to make up one’s mind what precisely number as a Koran — Google ’s notion is pretty standardized to the set of texts that ISBNs — International Standard Book Numbers — are attributed to .
But ISBN is a comparatively new measure , having come around in the sixties , and a relatively Western one , too , so there ’s a immense option of books — old books and foreign book , for the most part — that do n’t have ISBNs .
So Google leapfrogged ISBN and displume down metadata from some 150 sources , include “ library , WorldCat , national union catalogs and commercial providers , ” and then eliminate the duplicates . That got them to 600 million records . After eliminating more duplicate holdings , microforms , mapping , audio recording and other mixed non - books , and after conform the number to account for serial publications , the number is 129,864,880 . Hey , I ’ve read a few of those ! [ Inside Google BooksviaCrunchGear ]
Image creditPatrick Mary Jane
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