Page 236 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Unit 12: Bibliographical Sources

The trade bibliography can be defined as the one that is a list of books and other reading Notes
materials available for sale by the booksellers, printers, publishers and distributors of such
publications. They can be national or international in scope.

Example: Following are the examples of Trade Bibliographies:

Indian Books in Print. Delhi: Indian Bureau of Bibliographies, 1955.
Indian Book Industry. Delhi: Sterling, 1969.

British Books in Print. London: Whitaker, 1965.
Also called Trade catalogue, a list of books in print comprise ones published in a country and
frequently of books published abroad for which the home publishers are agent. Usually, firms
engaged in book trade publishing, distribution or sale of books issue such bibliographies.
Government being a major publisher in most countries of the world catalogues of government
publications also fall under this category.
Trade catalogues issued by Indian Publishers sometimes lack bibliographical information such
as number of pages, full name of the author or year of publication; trade bibliographies issued
by foreign publishers or distributors generally contain complete bibliographical details about
the publication along with the ISBN and Index to Authors and Titles.

Types of Trade Bibliographies

We shall see these trade bibliographies under following groups:

Commercially Produced Bibliographies and Trade Catalogues
(a) Commercially Produced Bibliographies: Cumulative Book Index: a world list of books in
English language. New York: Wilson, 1898 – to date. Monthly.

Popularly referred to as BI in library circles, entries in Cumulative Book Index are arranged
in alphabetical order by author, title, and subject headings put in one sequence. Each
monthly issue carries at the end a directory of publishers and distributors. Subject headings
are taken from the LC Subject Headings list. No issue is published for the month of July
and August each year. From 1969, annual cumulation is also being published.
(b) Booksellers’ Catalogues: Renowned booksellers in India and abroad bring out catalogues
of books and other material available in their ready stock mentioning the current prices of
the publications. These are very useful for book selection. Catalogues produced by world
known booksellers prove to be standard bibliographies on a specific subject.

Notes Some booksellers specialize in rare and out of print publications. Catalogues of
rare booksellers such as B.H. Blackwells, Oxford are very useful for collection development.
(c) Commercially Produced Trade Bibliographies: The two major commercially produced
trade bibliographies – ABPR and Whitaker’s Books of the Month also produce annual
cumulation with some modification and editing of the title included in monthly
publications. The annual volumes include only those titles that are still available with the
publishers. Appropriately these annual cumulations Book in Print (New York: R.R. Bowker),
1948 – Annual, Books in print 1957 – brought out by the same publisher are indexes of
books published and can be purchased from American Publishers.

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