Reports of “Top 100” best-circulating books and DVDs for the French, German, Russian, and Spanish languages, as well as biographical works in English, are now available for purchase and downloading on the NDP (Normative Data Project for Libraries) Web site .

Based on actual circulation data from nearly 500 libraries in North America, these lists provide libraries with unique business intelligence for making collection development, acquisitions, and other management decisions. Best-circulating lists for Chinese, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese are also in development and will soon be available for purchase and downloading.

“The communities served by today’s libraries are very diverse places,” said Angus Carroll, NDP project director and SirsiDynix chief marketing officer. “Having information on what language-based materials are circulating most in North American libraries is great new intelligence for libraries. Whether for collection development, acquisitions or other purposes, library managers now can make decisions about materials for English and other languages that are based on real data from real libraries.”

“And this is just the beginning,” said Bob Molyneux, NDP chief statistician. “We are expanding our mining of the NDP database to provide more language-based intelligence. Plus we are making available valuable intelligence on a range of subject- and genre-based topics. During a period of declining budgets, it is imperative that libraries spend collection development money well. Reports generated from NDP, which are simply unavailable elsewhere, provide ‘market intelligence’ for making informed decisions as never before possible.”

For more information, see www.libraryndp.info.