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Preface to the 10th Edition
Epilepsy Bibliography-Books and Monographs (EBBM) is a collective list of epilepsy-related books and monographs ever published in the world since 1945. Independent books, either serial or non-serial, are the major objects for inclusion in this collection. In addition, various types of monographs, such as dissertation, supplement/special issue to the journal and Proceedings, were included in this collection, as well.
Independent books and monographs are used to be published in isolation and sporadically from time to time, so that it is difficult to catch an information in a systematic way. Further, contrary to the case of original articles published in regular journals, for which several sophisticated retrieval systems such as PubMed, etc, are already established, no good electronic retrieval system is yet available as to the books.
The 10th edition of EBBM contains 2,929 titles which were published by December 31 2008. In the Table here attached, this total is broken down by the country where the publisher resides. There were 52 countries identified, while as to 3 titles the publishers could not be identified. The top 4 countries were USA, Japan, Germany and UK having 1960 titles, which occupied 67% of the total. I am afraid that this prevalence distribution might be skewed from the reality, leaving more books from other countries excluded due to a lack of information.
Figure here attached shows yearly distribution of the publishing year. It clearly illustrate a constant and rapid increase of number of publications according to the time passage. The year 2008 is only an exception, which shows a sharp drop of the curb. The cause for that is not clear, but may be complex.
This editor sincerely wish to ask an active collaboration of everyone (physicians, researchers, teachers, health and social workers, book authors, librarians, publishers, booksellers, all inclusive), who are interested in epilepsy problems, to the project of EBBM, by providing their respective knowledge and information to the editor .
Lastly, the editor wish to express his sincere thanks to Ms Pauline Brockett, a librarian of the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria, Australia, for her adamant collaboration with EBBM project. The same appreciation will be addressed to Mrs Y. Miyawaki for her excellent secretarial works at CNI.
December 31, 2009
Yukio Fukuyama, MD, PhD
Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Tokyo;
Director, Child Neurology Institute, Tokyo
Editor, EBBM
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