The subjects of the world’s books: A further examination of Unesco’s book production statistics

The Unesco Statistical Yearbook includes in its annual volumes tables reporting the number of books published by countries in subject classes according to the UDC classification system. These statistics are examined to assess global trends in subjects areas such as pure, social, medical, and applied sciences, and literature. Data from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and North America are found to be highly inconclusive due to nonreporting patterns. Data from Europe and the USSR are more comprehensive. According to these data, social science titles form the largest percentages of the world's production, followed by applied sciences and literature. Overall, literature and medical science titles appear to be increasing in production faster than other subject areas. Gretchen Whitney is an assistant professor at the Graduate Library School of the University of Arizona and author ofLanguage Distribution in Databases. She teache in the fields of information science and information policy.     

Are we teaching trauma?

Covering violence is an expected part of the daily job for many journalists in the United States; however, are college and university programs fully preparing students for what they may experience? This study surveyed accredited journalism schools in the United States. Of the 41 respondent schools, only one offered a course specifically aimed at teaching journalists how to protect themselves from psychological trauma and how best to interact with victims of trauma. Results show that although schools believe the topic of trauma is important and worth teaching to future journalists, the approach to the topic is mostly reactive and inconsistent. Implications for the future of journalism education are discussed.