Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Self-Publishing: A New Challenge For Universal Bibliographic Control, Robert P. Holley

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Self-publishing in the United States has increased to between 50-75% of book titles published annually, facilitated by the popularity of ebooks and print-on-demand. Amazon.com and other companies have encouraged the trend by paying royalties and providing support to authors. This increase in self-published materials poses a new challenge for Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC). Today, UBC is much different in the age of information overload compared with the relative information scarcity before the arrival of the Internet. Libraries have nonetheless retained an interest in bibliographically controlling traditional books. Self-published books can be indistinguishable from trade publications but fall outside many of …