How many cute pictures of little kids off to their first days of school did you see last week on your Facebook page? Roughly a million? Us, too. That's what got us thinking, like the true BookNet nerds that we are, about back-to-school keywords.
We wanted to know if this photographically-well-documented occasion was also well-documented metadata-wise. What sorts of keywords are publishers using for this fall event, over how many books, and where are those books falling on the shelves?
Using our BiblioShare data aggregation service, we pulled together some fun, back-to-school book stats. We want you to feel like you're going back to school with BookNet. Come for the recesses, stay for the infographics.
Overall, there are 2,541 titles with some form of school-related terms in the keywords, published by 80 firms. The most popular term is overwhelmingly "back to school." Straight to the point, publishers — we like it. And then, out of nowhere (much like on the field), "high school quarterback" runs onto the list at number 13. Puzzling.
The top 15 keyword terms are as follows:
back to school (974 EANs)
back to school books (358 EANs)
back to school books for kids (264 EANs)
back to school supplies (254 EANs)
best back to school books (252 EANs)
best back to school gift (252 EANs)
back-to-school (41 EANs)
back to school reader (13 EANs)
back to school gifts for kids (12 EANs)
back to school Bible (11 EANs)
back to school book (7 EANs)
back-to-school book (5 EANs)
high school quarterback (5 EANs)
back to school gifts (4 EANs)
books for back to school (4 EANs)
going back to school (4 EANs)
Just for fun, we made a graphic of the top 15 keyword terms.
As for the BISAC subjects applied to these books, we've highlighted the top 10 below. Perhaps surprisingly, the general reference BISAC is only in the fourth spot while nine of the top 10 are in the Juvenile Fiction category. We suppose if people are searching for "back-to-school gifts" and the "best back-to-school books," they're not looking for the perfect dictionary.
JUVENILE FICTION / School & Education (358 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories (178 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Friendship (104 EANs)
REFERENCE / General (96 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / New Experience (78 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Cooking & Food (71 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Media Tie-In (41 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Readers / Beginner (39 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Imagination & Play (38 EANs)
JUVENILE FICTION / Social Themes / Emotions & Feelings (33 EANs)
The number of Canadian-authored EANs with any school-related keywords is surprisingly low: only 10 authors with 22 titles between them. Perhaps there's an opportunity for publishers to highlight more Canadian-authored books that would be perfect for "back-to-school gifts" or the "best back-to-school books."
Those authors designated as Canadian on books with school-related keywords are:
Ashlyn Anstee (4 EANs)
Maureen Fergus (3 EANs)
Josie Penny (3 EANs)
Carey Sookocheff (3 EANs)
Mike Boldt (2 EANs)
Ashley Spires (2 EANs)
Andrew Kolb (1 EAN)
Julian Ross (1 EAN)
Richard Scrimger (1 EAN)
Carl Wiens (1 EAN)
Want to see what keywords are being used on other books? Our handy Biblio-o-matic Chrome extension detects ISBNs while you're browsing the internet and pulls data from BiblioShare on things like pub date, keywords, cover images, list price, and more. See how it works or try it out.
It can be tricky choosing which keywords will be the most helpful in constructing the best metadata, but BISG's Best Practices for Keywords in Metadata is here to help.
If you have other keyword queries or want to see us write a particular keyword-related blog post, let us know at biblioshare@booknetcanada.ca.
