[Foundation-l] How many books are there in the world?

[Bod Notbod]

Google has attempted to answer the question of how many books exist in
a very interesting blog post.

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted.html

Why am I posting this to Foundation-l?

Well, one of the things it reveals is the difficulty of answering this
question and I hope that it has some relation to Wikimedia projects;
in particular, I didn't know that multiple books (entirely unrelated
books) have shared ISBNs. So, if nothing else, it might impact...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN

And I also thought that Google's attempt to catologue all books was
parallel to our goal of... well, I'm not sure that we ever say we're
attempting to catalogue ALL knowledge... but we seem to be making a
decent fist of it so far.

Nevertheless, I confess that I'm still not sure I should be posting
this to Foundation-l... and it strikes me that perhaps the only
guidance I can find on what should be posted could perhaps be fleshed
out a little more:

https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

Apologies if this email strikes you as cruft.

Still, damn interesting blog post, eh?