The Bowker Global Books in Print database is
the database of record for U.S. books in print, as it has served as
the official ISBN agency to the United States since 1968. In
effect, any book that is assigned an ISBN (International Standard
Book Number) becomes a part of the database. At present, the
database contains detailed information on more than 12.5 million
in-print, out-of-print, and forthcoming books, audio books, and
videos from more than 40 countries.
All titles in the database are classified
under multiple subject headings, using detailed classification
schemes devised by Bowker, BISAC (the Book Industry Systems
Advisory Committee), and BIC (the Book Industry Communication
group). The database is searchable using each of these
classification schemes, or it may be searched using all three
schemes (for maximum inclusiveness).
To search the Bowker database, the user
chooses specific settings across a set of more than a dozen data
filters that systematically winnow the data so that only relevant
titles are displayed in the search results. The settings chosen to
track art history titles over time were as follows:
- In the first search field, "Publisher Name" was selected, and
all books where the publisher's name included the word "university"
were included in the search. A secondary search was necessary to
make sure that all relevant art history books published by MIT
Press were also included in the final counts; instead of specifying
"university" in the "Publisher Name" field, the letters "MIT" were
specified.
- In the second, third, and fourth search fields,
"Subject-(all)" was selected. This allowed titles to be searched
across all three subject classification schemes at the same time
(Bowker, BISAC and BIC), using three specific key words (one for
each search field). In the second search field, the key word "art"
was searched for, and in the third field, the term "history" was
searched for. Using these two terms yielded results that included
all titles for which both the word "art" and the word "history"
appeared in at least one of the three subject classification
schemes. But because a number of titles returned by this search
were in fact books dealing with "military arts," the fourth search
field was used to filter out all titles where the term "military"
was included as a subject descriptor.
- In the "Market" field, "United States" was selected, to limit
the output to books marketed in the United States.
- In the "Country of Publication" field, "United States" was
selected.
- In the "Language" field, "English" was selected, so that only
English-language works were captured by the search.
- In the "Format" field, "Book" was selected, so that audio and
video products would not be included.
- In the "Subject Limiter" field, "Non-fiction" was
selected.
- In the "Audience" field, "Adult" was selected, so that any
titles written specifically for young adults or children would not
be included in the results.
- The final data filter used to generate year-by-year lists of
art history titles published by university presses was the
"Publication Year" field. By entering an appropriate range of
years, e.g., "2000 to 2004" or "2005 to 2005," all titles published
within the specified range would be retrieved.
The output of the search results was a
title-by-title list of all books captured using the search
strategy. For each book listed, the following information was
provided: Title, Author, Contributor(s), Publisher, ISBN, Format,
Date of Publication, Price, Market, Availability, LC Classification
#, Dewey #, and ISBN 13 (the expanded 13-digit ISBNs that just went
into effect). Information in the "Author" and "Contributor(s)"
fields was used by the researchers to further classify each title
produced by eight university presses between 1985 and 2004 as
either a "single-author work" or not, and as a "museum-related
work" or not.
Data on size of market categories and
estimated book industry revenues across subject categories in 2004
were provided by Simba Information (
Business of Consumer Book
Publishing 2005, Simba Information: Stamford, CT, 2005), a division
of R. R. Bowker. Trend data (1993-2004) on total book production by
subject category for all U.S. presses (as a group) and for all
university presses (as a group) were provided by Bookwire (
http://www.bookwire.com/), also
a division of R.R. Bowker. (See, in particular,
http://www.bookwire.com/decadebookproduction.html and
http://www.bookwire.com/university.html.)
Trend data on the output of university presses
over time were provided by the Association of American University
Presses, which publishes an annual Directory containing information
about each of its 125 member presses (as of 2004-05). Title outputs
for the most recent two years are reported for each press listed in
the Directory. By consulting the directories from 1987-88 through
2004-05, it was possible to construct a database containing total
title output for all AAUP member presses across that period of
time. Since not all university presses are members of AAUP, it is
not possible to use AAUP data to analyze the total output of all
university presses over time. But it is possible to examine trends
in the total title output of specific university presses over
time.
