Bradford’s Law

It does not really seem to be a very well know phenomena outside of highly specialised circles – sort of proving his point. It seems to me it is as useful an idea as Bell’s Curve. Or is that just the bell curve 🙂 It strikes me that wealth is distributed in the Bradford way. This page is succinct. I’d like some graphics though.

Bradford’s law, sometimes called Bradford’s law of scatter, is useful, not just for writers and bibliographers, but for librarians doing collection development as well. 1/3 of the literature in a field can be covered in a small collection of core journals. To cover 2/3 of the literature, multiply the number of journals in the core by a constant (n) which varies by field. To have a comprehensive collection, multiply the number of journals in the core by the square of the constant.

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