Like many other companies, Worldwide Books assigns a number to its stock items. Each title that we carry and include in our online database is assigned a 6-digit number. These item numbers serve not only as unique identifiers for inventory and ordering purposes. They are also a relative indicator of when a book was published, they indicate whether or not a given title is a museum publication, and they can be used as parameters in combination with the < and > operators on our Advanced Search page to narrow search results.
The following distinct number ranges are currently used for our regular stock items:
000001-049999: This range is reserved exclusively for our Main Selections, significant exhibition catalogues likely to be of central importance to most academic libraries supporting broad undergraduate and graduate programs in art and art history, as well as noteworthy exhibition catalogues that cover more specialized topics or less prominent artists. The lower numbers represent older catalogues, dating all the way back to the early 1960s, while the most recent titles have been assigned numbers in the 038000 range;
050000-089999: This range is reserved for museum publications that we have designated as Additional Selections, including smaller exhibition catalogues, collection catalogues and other museum and gallery publications unrelated to exhibitions. As with the Main Selections, the lower item numbers indicate older titles, while the most recent publications have been assigned numbers in the 083000 range;
090000-199999: This range is reserved for trade and university-press books on art, architecture, photography and design that are not related to exhibitions and are available through American publishers and distributors, including titles published outside of the U.S. that are distributed in North America through a U.S.-based publisher or distributor. Again, the lower numbers indicate older titles, while the most recent titles have been assigned numbers in the 180000 range.
Other number ranges used for non-regular stock items with limited availability include:
400000-499999: In the process of reviewing new publications, our staff judges many exhibition catalogues and other museum publications to be inappropriate for general listing. This decision does not necessarily indicate a judgment of a book's relative quality or importance, but may reflect a recognition of its limited availability, prohibitive cost, or other problematic factors. Many of these publications are extremely noteworthy, and are included in our database as non-regular stock items;
700000-799999: This number range is reserved for certain special order items and reference records for publications that were cancelled, and does not represent actual stock items;
800000-899999: This range is exclusively reserved for publications distributed by Distributed Art Publishers (D.A.P.), although many of their titles eventually end up as regular stock items and take on stock numbers in other ranges;
900000-999999: This range of numbers is reserved for copies of books that are alternate editions of regular stock items, often so designated because their language of text, format or binding differs from our stock edition.
Please note that many of our title records are initially created before we see the books, based on advance publication information provided by publishers and distributors. This is true for most titles published or distributed by trade or university presses, all of which are initially assigned stock numbers in the 090000-199999 range, as well as for most D.A.P.-distributed titles, which are initially assigned stock numbers in the 800000 range.
Once a new trade or university-press title has been released and we have had the opportunity to examine it, it will typically be re-assigned a new stock number in the 000001-049999 or 050000-089999 range if it is a museum publication, while non-museum publications will retain their original numbers. Many recent and forthcoming D.A.P.-distributed publications that appear on our website will eventually be assigned new numbers, in the 000001-049999 or 050000-089999 range in the case of museum publications, or in the 090000-199999 range in the case of non-museum publications. D.A.P. titles that we choose not to list in our regular monthly offerings permanently retain their original number in the 800000 range on our website.
