The printing of titles on book spines

Re:The printing of titles on book spines by dredmorbius on Saturday June 03, 2017 @12:19PM (#14477049)

It's fascinating to see what small nudges, path-dependency, local tradition, and merging cultures do to conventions and practices.

On another book-related topic: I've been trying to sort out when Library of Congress details started appearing on the Title Page verso of American books. Seems to be between the 1940s and early 1960s, though the practice wasn't unversal even by the 1970s (sampling from books around the office).

ISBN (and its precursor SBN) are late 1960s.

(I've become a cataloging / classifications geek.)

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Re:The printing of titles on book spines by Finnucane on Saturday June 03, 2017 @12:56PM (#14477230)

The LOC CIP program, which gives publishers cataloging information in advance of publication, began in 1971. Before then, I don't think it was usual for publishers to have more than a catalog card number.

The CIP program mainly exists to make it easier for libraries to acquire and catalog books. LOC still requires that the data be printed in the book, even though most libraries now not surprisingly get the information online, either directly from LOC or from a service like OCLC.

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Re:The printing of titles on book spines by dredmorbius on Saturday June 03, 2017 @02:20PM (#14477653)

Thanks. I'm familiar with OCLC (and Worldcat), as well as http://id.loc.gov.

There's some pretty useful stuff out there these days :)

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