Readers at JNUL (Photo by Tomer Koren)

In anticipation of Hebrew Book Week, which will be from June 15-25 this year, the Jewish National and University Library of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has published data about books published in Israel during 2004.

The JNUL is the legal deposit library of Israel, and receives, according to the Israel “Book Act,” two copies of each book, journal, cassette or disk published in Israel. The publications are catalogued in the JNUL catalogue http://aleph500.huji.ac.il/F/?func=file&file_name=find-b&local_base=nnlall&con_lng=eng, in the Israel national bibliography and in the Israel Union List. The JNUL catalogue is the most comprehensive in Israel.
During 2004, 8,201 new Israeli titles were registered by the Legal Deposit Department of the JNUL: 6,436 books, 884 new periodicals, and 881 non-print titles, such as CDs and cassettes. In additions, 11,959issues of current periodicals were received at the JNUL.

Hebrew and Other Languages

Most of the titles were in Hebrew: 5,183. Of these, about 89% were originally written in Hebrew, and about 11% were translated into Hebrew.

The next common languages are English, 616 titles; Russian, 114 titles; and Arabic, 62 titles. In addition, 26 Romanian titles were published in Israel last year, 21 in Spanish and 13 in French. Only five titles in Amharic were registered, four in Yiddish and one in Ladino. A few books were published in other languages, such as German, Hungarian, Italian and Chinese.

Children Books and Textbooks

About 480 books for children and youth were deposited in the library – about 7.5% of the total number of books received. In addition, 262 textbooks were deposited – about 4% of the total number of books received.

Type of Publishing

Fifty-five percent of the books were published by commercial publishing houses,
10% by the government and governmental institutions, and 7% by educational institutions – universities, colleges and schools. Fourteen percent of the books were published by associations, foundations, museums, community centers and other organizations, and another 14% were self-published by authors.

Sectors

The orthodox and ultra-orthodox sector was responsible for 21% of the total titles that were published in Israel in 2004.

The Jewish National and University Library's Legal Deposit Department maintains an extensive listing of Israeli publishers http://www.jnul.huji.ac.il/eng/, including many minor publishers who issue only a few books a year. The Information recorded includes address, telephone, and fax number of each publisher. The database includes 1,297 active publishers and organizations, which engage in publishing. Of them, 856 are commercial publishing houses, and 441 are non-commercial. There are 458 publishers for the orthodox sector, and five for non-Jewish religious communities.

Nineteen publishers published mainly in Russian, and another 37 publishers published in Russian beside their main Hebrew activity. Six publishers published mainly in Arabic, and 25 publishers published in Arabic besides Hebrew.