Western language books in the Beijing Library: criteria for acquisition and the method of selection

According to 1993 statistics, some 750,000 new books are published annually in the various languages of the world. Of these, Britain publishes about 86,000, the US about 50,000 while France produces about 41,000. From the publication lists of the major countries that publish English language books, including Britain, the US, Germany, Holland, Canada and Australia (from which we order our books each year), we may choose to order from over 100,000 English language books, excluding children’s books and textbooks: the highest number among all languages in the world. And if we were to count up the publicity for new titles reported in the catalogues provided by book merchants and publishers, we would have to read about 200,000 pieces of information on new English language books. However, each year, we acquire about 20,000 English language books, about 2,000 each of German and French and a small number of Spanish, Italian and Romanian books. Books in other languages are acquired only occasionally and not on a regular basis. As the library has limited funds for purchase, we have defined the principle of ‘Completeness for Chinese books and essence for foreign language books’. We can only make a limited selection from countless foreign publications, to satisfy the needs of readers and, in addition, to reflect the characteristics of the collections. It is easy to imagine the difficulties involved with the task.