How many books are in the world?

how many books books books are in the whole world of books

The number of books in the world (Google)

Have you ever wondered how many books you have in the world? This question, whose answer for many is nothing more than a curiosity, it is very important to Google, a company that is engaged in an ambitious project which consists of scanning every literary work ever been published. Google Books makers have analyzed the problem thoroughly, and have reached a specific number. Do you know which is the number of books in the world?

The guys at Google know how to do to not get bored. One of the latest "hobby" that they have found is to determine which is the number of books have been published and you can find a copy can be digitized and incorporated into its Google Books project. Can that initially seems a relatively simple task, and any of us might think that travel the Library catalog of the U.S. Congress or analyze the database that contains the ISBN (International Standard Book Number, or Standard Book Number international) would have a fair idea of the number in question. But it is not easy.





There are about 129,864,880 of different books.


First, the ISBN number, which seems the best candidate to contain everything published, only been used since 1960 or 1970, or even used worldwide. Previously published works do not have that number, and there are many other things (CDs, magazines, etc.) That also have an ISBN, so it can not be used to determine the number of books published. The library catalogs are not the solution. Putting aside that even the world's most comprehensive libraries have only a small percentage of books that exist, in many cases the same book is listed more than once. This occurs because many librarians assigned different numbers to a single book has been published as hard cover or case of a paperback. Google, thanks to the technology available in your browser, analyzed thousands of listings of books from libraries, bookstores, museums, publishers and everything you can imagine, for "after removing all duplicate records, reaching an estimated : there are some 129,864,880 of different books. Or at least were until a week ago, when it was published that value.





This is an impressive number, including books that have been printed by the millions and doctoral theses which only a couple of copies in the library of any university. If you had hopes of reading an important part of the books published, this number must have shattered your dream: if you were able to read one book per minute for 24 hours a day 365 days a year, you would need almost 250 years finish reading all that. And to make matters worse (or fortunately) are published every day hundreds of new books, so that complaints such as "I find nothing interesting to read" do not really have any sense. Do not you think?

Source: http://www.neoteo.com/la-cantidad-de-libros-en-el-mundo-google.neo