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World's Largest Online Library of Books Launches "Best Read eBooks List"
HOUSTON (August 8, 2002) - Questia Media announced today that it has launched a monthly list of the books most frequently used on Questia, the world's largest online library of books. The first installment of the list, attached below, reveals the top 20 accessed titles for July 2002 out of Questia's collection of more than 70,000 books and journal articles spanning a broad range of subjects in the social sciences, history, and the arts, among others. This best read list provides a snapshot of the most active titles and subjects on Questia and will be published on a monthly basis at www.Top20eBooks.com.
"Internally, we have found it fascinating to see which titles are accessed across a broad population each week. It seemed like this was something that a lot of other people would be interested in, too," said Troy Williams, Questia Media Inc.'s President and CEO. "Until now, there really hasn't been a way to tell what library patrons are reading across the nation. In fact, even if all the libraries aggregated their circulation data, you would still only have part of the picture because you wouldn't know how much, if any, of a given book had been read by those patrons," Williams continued. "Our weblogs show exactly how much of each book is read by many thousands of people across all 50 states of the United States as well as nearly a hundred countries worldwide, and tell you for a given month, which books were accessed most widely. It's really quite interesting."
The Questia Top 20 Best Read eBooks list is derived from usage data from all of Questia's users on an aggregate level. Ranking is based primarily on page views (each time one person looks at a page results in one "page view") and the overall number of unique users who accessed that title. Secondarily, book length is factored in to correct for the fact that shorter books, even if read in their entirety, would have fewer page views.
The Questia service offers subscribers unlimited simultaneous access to every title within the Questia collection, enabling all users to read any book or journal article regardless of how many other users are reading the same book or journal article. Publishers receive a royalty for each page view that occurs. This way of accessing books provides publishers who previously could only profit from one-time sales of hard copy books to libraries with a new recurring revenue stream. The Questia Top 20 Best Read eBooks list is of particular interest to academics, libraries, and educational institutions. Libraries project their budgets and book purchase plans based in part on the number of patrons served and the usage patterns of the books they currently hold. However, spanning library systems nationwide, it is nearly impossible to ascertain the total number of patrons who checked out a given book, let alone the number of pages read within that book. The Questia Top 20 Best Read eBooks list provides an unprecedented view into the aggregated reading habits of Questia's subscribers in total, who are primarily undergraduate students but also represent high school students, graduate students, professors, librarians and lifelong learners worldwide. The July list shows an interesting range of topics, spanning current events such as corporate corruption and business ethics to alcoholism and Islam.
Questia Top 20 Best Read eBooks
July 2002 |
| 1. | The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, by Ronald E. Powaski. Oxford University Press, 1998. |
| 2. | A Better Way to Think about Business: How Personal Integrity Leads to Corporate Success, by Robert C. Solomon. Oxford University Press, 1999. |
| 3. | The Other Half: Wives of Alcoholics and Their Social-Psychological Situation, by Jacqueline P. Wiseman. A. de Gruyter, 1991. |
| 4. | The Ethics of Abortion: Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice, by Robert M. Baird, editor. Prometheus Books, 1993. |
| 5. | Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, by Geddes MacGregor. Paragon House, 1989. |
| 6. | Capital Punishment in the United States: A Documentary History, by Bryan Vila, editor. Greenwood Press, 1997. |
| 7. | Corporate Corruption: The Abuse of Power, by Marshall B. Clinard. Praeger Publishers, 1990. |
| 8. | Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, by Damien Keown. Oxford University Press, 1996. |
| 9. | Democracy: A Short, Analytical History, by Roland N. Stromberg. M.E. Sharpe, 1996. |
| 10. | We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, by John Lewis Gaddis. Oxford University Press, 1997. |
| 11. | The Abortion Controversy: A Documentary History, by Eva R. Rubin, editor. Praeger Publishers, 1998. |
| 12. | Becoming Alcoholic: Alcoholics Anonymous and the Reality of Alcoholism, by David R. Rudy. Southern Illinois University Press, 1986. |
| 13. | Corporate Misconduct: The Legal, Societal, and Management Issues, by Margaret P. Spencer, editor. Quorum Books, 1995. |
| 14. | The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction, by Walter Laqueur. Oxford University Press, 1999. |
| 15. | Ethics Through Corporate Strategy, by Daniel R. Gilbert Jr. Oxford University Press, 1996. |
| 16. | Islam: An Introduction, by Annemarie Schimmel. State University of New York Press, 1992. |
| 17. | Personality, by David C. McClelland. Sloane, 1951. |
| 18. | Against Capital Punishment: The Anti-Death Penalty Movement in America, by Herbert H. Haines. Oxford University Press, 1996. |
| 19. | Women and the Koran: The Status of Women in Islam, by Anwar Hekmat. Prometheus Books, 1997. |
| 20. | Drug and Alcohol Abuse: The Authoritative Guide for Parents, Teachers, and Counselors, by H. Thomas Milhorn, Jr. Perseus Books (Current Publisher: Perseus Publishing), 1994. |
| Rankings reflect total page views and unique users on the Questia service for July 1 through July 31, 2002, statistically weighted to factor in book length. |
About Questia
Founded in 1998, Questia Media, Inc., launched its revolutionary online library with powerful search and writing
tools created specifically to help students write better papers in January 2001. Questia provides unlimited access
to the full content of an extensive collection of books and journal articles, as well as a wide range of tools
including highlighter, markup, automatic footnotes and bibliography builder. For millions of students and researchers,
the Questia SM service will enable them to efficiently research and compose papers at any time, from virtually
every connected corner of the world. Based in Houston, Questia is delivering on the true promise of the Internet
by providing access to a wealth of human knowledge. Visit www.questia.com for
more information.
CONTACTS:
Helen Wilson
Questia Media, Inc 713-358-2551
hwilson@questia.com
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