Off the shelf | News | Guardian Unlimited Books
It’s been suggested that 85% of published information is not available online. So where is it?
The Library of Congress in Washington DC is the largest library in the world with about 29m books among its 130m items, while the British Library has about 13m catalogued books.
In May 2006, the New York Times estimated that at least 32m books have been published since the days of Sumerian clay tablets. Another estimate has suggested that the human race publishes a book every 30 seconds
In 1450, new titles were published at a rate of 100 per year. In 1950, that figure had grown to 250,000. By the millennium, the number published exceeded a million.
It’s estimated that of all the books ever published, more than 95% are out of print
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.