Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Wikibooks Breakdown

We've been doing a lot of effort recently to try and organize en.Wikibooks, and one of the results of this process is that we can start to see the general breakdown of exactly how many books we have in what subject areas. Because it is the most descriptive, I will try and break down the number of books that we have according to the Library of Congress classification system. Keep in mind that not all our books have been categorized at this point, this is just a preliminary count:

  • LOC A (Generalities): None (or none that have been properly categorized)
  • LOC B (Philosophy, Psychology, Religion): 16
  • LOC C, D, E, F (History): 2
  • LOC H (Social Sciences): 31
  • LOC J (Political Science): 6
  • LOC K (Law): 43
  • LOC L (Education): 46
  • LOC M, N (Fine Art and Music): 0 (or none that have been properly categorized)
  • LOC P (Language and Literature): 3
  • LOC Q (Mathematics and Science, including computer science): Several Hundred
  • LOC R (Medicine): 55
  • LOC S (Agriculture): 0 (or none that have been properly categorized)
  • LOC T (Technology): 55
  • LOC U, V (Military and Naval Sciences): 0 (or none that have been properly categorized)
  • LOC Z (Library and Information Sciences): 5
As we can see from this list, the majority of our books are located in the "Mathematics and Sciences" section. However, if we compare this list to the books that have been "featured", we can see a different breakdown entirely:

  • Math and Science (Q, R, T): 20
  • Social Sciences (C, D, E, F, H, J, K): 9
  • Humanities and Arts (B, M, N, P): 10
  • Misc (All others): 5
If you consider that Q and T represent a wide variety of subjects: math, computer science, engineering, science, and medicine, the 20 books in that category really doesnt seem like a large amount. This is especially true when you consider how many books are in this category, according to my first list. Even though there are many many books in the Q category (especially in the area of computers), relatively few of them go on to become featured books. Many computer books, especially books on obscure programming languages or on outdated software, are aborted.

As we get further into the categorization project, and we are more careful to properly sub-categorize all our books, I will be sure to post updated numbers.

1 comment:

  1. This is interesting, I think it's good news because our featured books are on a variety of topics and will hopefully have something interesting to everyone.

    ReplyDelete