Publication Places
Publication Places
Woodstock Special Collections items were published in 111 different countries around the world, but the majority of the materials were published in Europe (73.71%). Approximately 4% of these items do not have a place of publication in their records which indicates more research is required to fully describe those materials - these records are in the “Unknown” category in the visualizations below. To facilitate the analysis of publication places, we examined data from two different fields in the catalog record:
Place of Publication field - this data is transcribed from the resource in hand during the cataloging process and can be as granular as country, state, or city.
Fixed Publication field - this is a 2 or 3 letter code from a standardized vocabulary that represents the country where the resource was published. The data in this area is less specific than the Place of Publication field, but it is more easily normalized and machine-processed.
The team chose to group publication places into specific larger regions to provide a more holistic view of where these materials were published as the broad number of different publication places was not conducive for creating intelligible graphs and maps. We realize that the grouping of regions for this analysis is subjective and we chose specific groupings based on modern geographic boundaries.
The following bubble graph shows the overarching regions of publication for this collection, including Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, and South America. The “Unknown” region represents materials that did not have a place of publication in their catalog records, which will need further review and description. The “Other” region represents the places of publication that did not fit into the five overarching regions stated above. Europe is the place in which a majority of the collection was published, followed by North America.
Zooming in from a worldwide regional view to a country view, the colored dots in the map below identify all the countries throughout the world where books in the collection were published. The chart demonstrates the wide geographic scope of the collection, which contains materials from all continents except Antarctica. A large part of the collection was published in Europe.
While the Woodstock collection contains materials from around the globe, some regions are more heavily represented than others. In the world map below, shading is used to show how many books were published in each country: the darker the shading, the more books were published in that country. Some countries, appearing in white or tan, are not represented in the collection at all. Data analysis showed us that a large proportion of the books in the collection were published in the European countries combined, followed by North America.
Zooming in on Europe: An in depth analysis of the data demonstrates that a majority of the rare materials in the Woodstock Library were published in Europe. Therefore a decision was made to investigate which subregions in Europe these books were published. Please see the Appendix for a list of countries included in each subregion. Data revealed that a significant portion, 37.77%, of the Woodstock rare book collection published in Europe was published in Western Europe. 27.81% of the collection was published in Central Europe followed by 20.41% in the Mediterannean Region and 13.91% in Great Britain and Ireland. Only 12 books (or 0.12%) were published in Northern Europe.
While chart 4.4 above provides a regional overview of Europe, the team was also interested in seeing how many books were published within each country in Europe as demonstrated in Chart 4.5. The largest portion of the materials published in Europe were published in Germany (2,287 items or 23.12%) followed closely by France (2,192 items or 22.16%), Italy (2,001 items or 20.23%), England (1,136 items or 11.48%), and Belgium (860 items or 8.69%). We can see from chart 4.4 above that the largest portion of the collection was published in the Western Europe subregion so it is interesting that chart 4.5 below shows that the largest portion of the collection within Europe as a whole was published in one country, Germany, in the Central Europe subregion.
This diagram shows the country of publication data from Chart 4.5 above in map form. The number of books from each country is represented by the shading on the map: countries with more publications, such as Germany, France, and Italy, are shaded in dark blue; countries with fewer publications appear in paler shades of blue.
The following chart lists the top 15 cities around the world where Woodstock Special Collections materials were published, as well as how many items were published in those cities. Note that the top 15 cities of publication are located in Europe and the United States. There are also 499 records that did not have cities of publication which is indicated by “[Place of publication not identified]” - these items will need further review in the future.
The pie chart above shows the top 15 cities around the world where Woodstock Special Collections materials were published as well as how many items were published in those cities.
This chart further analyzes the top 15 cities shown above by also displaying the century in which Woodstock Special Collections materials were published. Paris, France is the only city where materials were published in each century from the 15th century to the 21st century. There are also a few materials published in Paris, France that currently have unknown publication dates.
Because Europe accounts for 10 of the top 15 cities of publication, and is the source of the majority of the collection published prior to 1800, we chose to take a closer look at the city of publication data from this region. The following diagram shows all European cities of publication in map form. The size of each dot on the map indicates the number of items in the collection that were published in that city. The bigger the dot, the more publications originating from that location. From this map, you can see that, while most items come from a few major urban centers that serve as publishing hubs, there are also many smaller cities across Europe where books from the collection have been published.
The previous charts and maps showed overall publication patterns for the collection. The following series of trend maps illustrate changes in the collection’s dominant places of publication over time, showing a gradual shift from Europe to North America. The number of books from each country is represented by the shading on the map: countries with more publications are shaded in dark blue; countries with fewer publications appear in paler shades of blue. To navigate from one century to the next, click on the tabs at the top of the map.