Publishers Catalogues

Definition

Harrods defines publishers' catalogues as lists of books issued for sale by a publisher." These catalogues have traditionally been published in Ôprint' but are now increasingly Ôonline' as a regular feature and necessity of a publisher's website.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The strengths of this tool type for collection development are various. If a collection development library has a mandate of Ôcomprehensiveness' in a particular field or area and a certain publisher publishes exclusively in this area, the publisher's catalogue is an indispensable tool type. For more specialized libraries where books are not advertised in Ômass media sources', this tool type has advantages in that it can inform the collection development librarian about books of which he or she might otherwise be unaware. Publishers' catalogues give the collection development librarian a list of the publisher's newest and forthcoming titles. Advantages of this tool also revolve around the fact that the books gleaned here will be in print, available and easier to order as the publisher's address, information and customer order forms are present. Because publishers catalogues are important marketing tools for the publishing company, the review or information about a book will be biased in favor of the book and slanted towards purchase and acquisition. While publishers' catalogues provide information about a particular publisher's holdings they will seldom mention Ôthe competition's similar book titles'. The reviews and information about materials are largely written towards Ôpromotional' purposes rather than more objective source reviews from a newspaper, journal or library reviewing guide such as Choice.