130m books?

[A very useful outline of book identification from a Google engineer concerned with counting them. It both accepts the confusion, and shines a lot of light.  One to keep a copy of, I think.]


http://www.booktrade.info/i.php/28646
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html
Books of the world, stand up and be counted! All 129,864,880 of you. 
Thursday, August 05, 2010 at 8:26 AM 
Posted by Leonid Taycher, software engineer


'...When you are part of a company that is trying to digitize all the books in the world, the first question you often get is: “Just how many books are out there?”...'
'...The other reason we can’t rely on ISBNs alone is that ever since they became an accepted standard, they have been used in non-standard ways. They have sometimes been assigned to multiple books: we’ve seen anywhere from two to 1,500 books assigned the same ISBN. They are also often assigned to things other than books. Even though they are intended to represent “books and book-like products,” unique ISBNs have been assigned to anything from CDs to bookmarks to t-shirts....'






Joseph Harris is Smile Poet
Author: Smile Poet's Toilet
Mailing list [email protected]
http://smilepoet.com     [email protected]

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------
Post a message:   ebook-community [[at]] *
Unsubscribe:      ebook-community-unsubscribe [[at]] *
Switch to digest: ebook-community-digest [[at]] *
Switch to normal: ebook-community-normal [[at]] *
Put mail on hold: ebook-community-nomail [[at]] *
Administrator:    ebook-community-owner [[at]] *

(* == yahoogroups.com)
-------------------------------------------------------Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/

<*> Your email settings:
    Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/join
    (Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
    [email protected] 
    ebook-community-fullfeatured-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ebook-community-unsubscribe-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@public.gmane.org

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/