129,864,880
The number of books in the world*, as counted by Google. Their blog has an interesting post about how, to arrive at this number, they had to combine data from multiple sources and then whittle it down:
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?”
Well, it all depends on what exactly you mean by a “book.” We’re not going to count what library scientists call “works,” those elusive “distinct intellectual or artistic creations.” It makes sense to consider all editions of “Hamlet” separately, as we would like to distinguish between — and scan — books containing, for example, different forewords and commentaries.
One definition of a book we find helpful inside Google when handling book metadata is a “tome,” an idealized bound volume. A tome can have millions of copies (e.g. a particular edition of “Angels and Demons” by Dan Brown) or can exist in just one or two copies (such as an obscure master’s thesis languishing in a university library). This is a convenient definition to work with, but it has drawbacks…
* as of Thursday, August 05, 2010 at 8:26 AM
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