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Science 13 September 1963:
Vol. 141. no. 3585, pp. 1067 - 1068
DOI: 10.1126/science.141.3585.1067
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Articles

Information Storage Requirements for the Contents of the World's Libraries

John W. Senders 1

1 Bolt Beranek and Newman Inc., 50 Moulton Street, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

Three calculations of the number of different things stored in the world's libraries yield estimates from 7.5 x 107 to 7.7 x 108. At 105 words per volume, five letters per word, and 12 bits per letter, the information capacity used for storage is between 4.6 x 1014 and 4.6 x 1015 bits, and is increasing at about 2 x 106 bits per second.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
"Science Citation Index"--A New Dimension in Indexing.
E. Garfield (1964)
Science 144, 649-654
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)