Tuesday Take-up

It took Books In Print over 130 years to get to 10million books. Here Librarything.com seems to have done it in two years. Of course, the databases are not directly compatible but it is nevertheless quite a powerful statement for croudsourcing and social networking.

Since it is coming into Academy Award season here is a list of popular books that haven't made it onto the screen. The list includes The Catcher in the Rye, Atlas Shrugged and Mein Kampf (Selznick produces and Hitch directs).

The posts on Hitwise are always interesting and here is a recent one on search terms.

From Public Lending Right in the UK is an annual listing of the most popular titles checked out of UK libraries. The winner is a children's writer Jacqueline Wilson.

Titles by the immensely popular children’s writer were lent almost two million
times between July 2005 and June 2006. Wilson’s nearest rivals are the adult
novelists, James Patterson, Josephine Cox, Danielle Steel and Ian Rankin who
each need to clock up at least another half million loans annually before they
can pose a threat to the "queen of library lending".

The article also notes the strength in lending of Dan Brown and J.K. Rowling which is interesting to me given the huge numbers of copies sold through retail, the abundance of second hand copies, continued strength of paper and mass market versions and yet they are still strong through the library. What does that mean?

When Martha Stewart published her first cookbook there were rumors the recipies hadn't been fully tested. I don't know if this was true or malicious however Mrs PND has never cooked a bad meal out of one of the MS books. Along the same lines is a cautionary tale from India. Do not include meat in your recipies.