College and Research Libraries Research Notes 257 An Index of Publisher Quality for the Academic Library John Calhoun and James K. Bracken Any subject bibliographer who has se- lected books from magazine reviews, like those in Choice, or from approval slips, like those in Baker & Taylor's program, knows the difficulty of identifying the best books from among the many described as '' im- mensely useful," "essential," or "indis- pensable" -or not described at all. Ensur- ing the purchase of only those books which will eventually be included in Choice's annual "Outstanding Academic Books" list (hereinafter simply OAB) would require either monitoring all of the reviews and ordering only those which are highly recommended, or waiting until the list appears and making purchases retrospectively-and neither alternative is particularly attractive . Fortunately, how- ever, one of the easily apprehensible fea- tures included in both the reviews and the slips is the name of the publisher, and once a bibliographer recognizes that cer- tain publishers produce more OAB titles than others, monitoring the reviews or slips becomes a much easier task. With a little effort, it is possible to con- struct a list of the sixty most often appear- ing OAB publishers from Choice, and the figures on the left side of the ratios in column 1 of table 1 show the average num- ber of titles placed by those publishers on the five most recently available lists. 1 It is also possible to construct a list of the total number of titles published by each of the same firms from the "US Book Pub- lishers" chapter in Literary Market Place, and the figures on the right of the ratios in column 1 show the average number of to- tal titles per year during the same five-year period (except when followed by a smaller figure in parentheses, which indicates the number of years data was reported during that period). 2 By combining the figures of column 1 to form a ratio, a measurement of publisher quality (at least as seen by this one review source) can be compiled, and we give that measurement as a simple ra- tio in column 2. The correlation of data from the two lists produces a qualitative measurement for only the five most recent years. Certainly the OAB titles, as well as the much larger number of total titles from any given pub- lisher, fluctuates from one year to the next so that some publishers of quality may not be represented (especially when, like Addison-Wesley, they neglect to report total titles in Literary Market Place). Still, certain publishers seem to appear on the OAB lists more frequently than others: Harvard, with 18 OAB titles in 1981, also had 18 in 1980, 16 in 1979, 14 in 1978, and 18 in 1977; while Prentice-Hall, a much larger publisher, with 10 in 1981, had only 6in 1980, 9in 1979, 6in 1978, and8in 1977. On this basis we believe that it is reason- able to conclude that the proportion of a publisher's OAB titles to its total titles is relatively constant-that ~s, a trustworthy guide to how much of the job has already been done for us by a rigorous editorial staff. To make the ratios a little more com- prehensible, we have assigned an index- ing value of 1.0 to the 1:22.7 figure en- joyed by both Oxford and Cambridge, two old and respected academic publishers that most subject bibliographers feel they ''know,'' and have computed corres- ponding figures for the other publishers in column3. Basic Books and Free Press produce OABs at about twice the frequency of Ox- ford and Cambridge; and Cornell, Har- vard, Indiana, Princeton, Temple, and Yale do even better than that. A "blind" purchase by any of these publishers is lia- John Calhoun is technical services librarian, and James K. Bracken is readers services librarian, Seymour Li- brary, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. -- - --- -l 258 College & Research Libraries May 1983 TABLE 1 II ill IV Academic 12.0:560 1.46.67 .49 60 Ballinger 2.0:81 1.40.50 .56 6 Barnes & Noble 2.4:91 1:38.08 .60 25 Basic 5.8:64 1:10.97 2.07 19 ( + 13) California 15.6:197 1:12.63 1.80 57 Cambridge 18.6:425 1:22.85 1.00 115 Chicago 11.4:212 1:18.63 1.22 64 Columbia 8.8:103 1:11.66 1.93 42 Cornell 8.0:83 1:10.35 2.20 33 ( + 12) Doubleday 5.0:616 1:123.21 .18 42 ( -15) Free 6.2:70 (3) 1:11.29 2.02 18 ( + 17) Freeman 3.0:55 1:18.27 1.25 22 Fortress 2.0:53 1:26.40 .86 1 Gale 3.6:125 1:34.61 .66 40 Greenwood 6.0:565 1:.94.17 .24 82 (- 49) Hall 3.6:447 1:124.28 .18 48 Halsted 5.2:277 1:55.07 .43 14 Harper&Row 7.6:1078 1:141.84 .16 72 (- 30) Harvard 16.8:113 1:6.73 3.38 78 ( + 15) Holmes & Meier 2.6:102 1:39.23 .58 16 Humanities 2.6:215 1:88.69 .28 22 Illinois 3.2:51 1:15.94 1.43 23 Indiana 7.0:75 1:11.09 2.40 26 ( + 12) Johns Hopkins 6.4:97 1:15.13 1.59 38 Jossey-Bass 2.8:75 1:26.79 .85 3 Knopf 9.2:138 1:15.04 1.51 48 Lexington 2.8:157 1:56.14 .41 19 Little, Brown 5.4:297 1:55.07 .41 33 McGraw-Hill 5.2:800 (1) 1:153.85 .15 40 ( -10) Minnesota 2.4:43 1:17.75 1.28 15 MIT 4.0:101 1:25.30 .90 35 New York 2.6:58 1:22.23 1.02 9 North Carolina 3.2:42 1:13.00 1.64 15 Norton 7.0:269 1:38.40 .59 44 Oxford 29.2:661 1:22.64 1.00 150 Pantheon 3.2:78 1:24.25 .94 21 Pergamon 3.4:345 1:101.47 .22 44 Plenum 3.8:315 1:82.89 .27 23 Praeger 3.4:194 1:56.94 .40 23 Prentice-Hall 7.8:1200 (2) 1:153.85 .15 58 ( -14) Princeton 16.8:146 1:8.67 2.62 88 ( +5) Putnam's 2.8:226 1:80.64 .28 11 Random House · 4.0:543 1:135.85 .17 44 ( -22) Routledge & Kegan Paul 4.8:240 (1) 1:50.00 .46 34 Rowman & Littlefield 3.2:95 (4) 1:29.69 .77 11 Scarecrow 4.0:102 1:25.40 .90 27 Scribner's 3.4:329 1:96.76 .24 21 Southern illinois 2.4:45 1:18.58 1.22 15 Springer-Verlag 4.4:328 1:74.55 .31 40 St. Martin's 6.6.459 1:69.55 .33 63 Temple 2.8:25 1:8.93 2.55 13 ( + 13) Texas 3.2:56 1:17.50 1.30 13 Thames & Hudson 2.8:33 (4) 1:11.79 1.93 6 Twa~e 3.2:122 1:38.19 .60 119( -101) Van ostrand 3.4:284 1:83.53 .27 8 Viking 4.2:172 1:40.90 .56 37 Westview 3.4:187 1:58.44 .39 34 Wiley 12.2:779 1:63.87 .36 72 Wisconsin 2.6:36 1:13.85 1.64 10 Yale 10.6:97 1:9.11 2.50 40 ( + 19) Research Notes 259 ble to be a pretty good bet. Doubleday, Harper & Row, McGraw-Hill, Prentice- Hall, and Random House (the big trade publishers), on the other hand, are such poor bets (in this league) that a subject bib- liographer is well advised to have a con- vincing review in hand before selecting a title. of the first group and less of the second (exactly how many titles, based on what we were willing to buy from Oxford and Cambridge, we suggest in parentheses). We also find convincing evidence suggest- ing that some of our buying habits have become so calcified that they have pro- duced bibliographical fossils reminiscent of the Jurassic Age: our Greenwood and Twayne purchases are the dinosaurs of a primeval era in acquisitions. When we examine our own purchases over an average year (given here as column 4}, we find convincing evidence which suggests we should be buying more REFERENCES 1. "Outstanding Academic Books 1981," Choice 19, no. 9 (May 1982): 1184-1200; "Outstanding Aca- demic Books 1980," Choice 18, no. 9 (May 1981): 1206-1226; "Outstanding Academic Books 1979," Choice 17, no. 3 (May 1980): 331-52; "Outstanding Academic Books 1978," Choice 16, no. 3 (May 1979): 335-55; "Outstanding Academic Books 1977," Choice 15, no. 3 (May 1978): 339-62. 2. ''US Book Publishers,'' Literary Market Place with Names & Numbers 42 (1982): 1-143; ''US Book Pub- lishers,'' Literary Market Place with Names &Numbers 41 (1981): 1-137; ''US Book Publishers,'' Liter- ary Market Place with Names & Numbers 40 (1980): 1-135; "US Book Publishers," Literary Market Place with Names & Numbers 39 (1979): 1-126; "US Book Publishers," Literary Market Place with Names & Numbers 38 (1978): 1-117. --I I I I I I I · I I I I I I I I -- -------------------LONGMAN INTRODUCES ... A MOST EFFICIENT GUIDE TO STATISTICAL INFORMATION DATAMAP Index of Published Tables of Statistical Data Jarol B. Manheim and Allison Ondrasik When researchers need to know quickly if the statistical information they're looking for is available, DATAMAP has the answer. • Researchers consulting DATAMAP find out immediately both if the statistic is available-and exactly where it can be found. • DATAMAP indexes over 10,000 statistical tables in twenty-eight of the most widely-held, and most widely-used reference publications: Agricultural Statistics • Annual Survey of Manufacture s • Bu si ness Statistics/Survey of Cu rrent Business • County and City Data Book • Congressional Di strict Data Book • Condition of Education • Criminal justice Statistics • Characteri stics of the Population, U.S. Summary • Compendium of Social Statistics • Commodity Yearbook • Digest of Educa tional Statistics • Handbook of L3bor Stati stics * Health - United States • International Financial Statistics Yearbook • Information Please Almanac • Minerals Yearbook • Municipal Yearbook .-. 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Longman5college & Professional Book Division, 1560 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y. 10036 ------------------- ~----------------------------------------------- ----- ----- ------------- ==========Scholar's Guide to Intelligence Literature:========== Bibliography of the Russell J. Bowen Collection Why do we need a bibliography on intelligence? Because in the years since World War II intelligence has played an increasingly important role in shaping both the foreign policy and the defense policy of the United States and other major nations. Moreover, as the role of intelligence in diplomatic and strategic decision making has become more promi- nent, more institutionalized, and more public, the literature on intelligence has become vast and varied. 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