Carleton's "Frequency of Mention of Titles" Databases for Art, Literature, and Music

Explanation of Pricing

The Carleton Academic Quiz Team is offering to sell printouts from our frequency of mention of titles databases to any person, school or team at a rate of 2.5 cents per title for a first-time purchase. The number of titles that you buy depends upon the "weight" cutoff that you'd like to order. We have chosen not to sell printouts of titles mentioned only once or twice, as that includes a lot of really weird stuff not necessarily likely ever to come up again, for which we have so far made no attempt to verify the linkage between title and a name, or dates, or information about real names (versus pseudonyms), alternate titles, or, for music, librettists or lyricists as well as composers where that is appropriate. We do provide all of this information for every title that reaches the threshold of at least three mentions -- though we can't possibly guarantee that all of the information (regarding dates for instance) is 100% accurate, as we often simply type in whatever the question in front of us says, rather than doublecheck in reference sources. (We will, however, try to resolve any discrepancies that come to our attention.) We also won't sell printouts at any level that would yield fewer than 500 titles.

We will send printouts sorted in any way that you would prefer, consistent with the fields which we have established for each database. The most common orders have been for lists sorted first alphabetically by name of creator, and then in descending order by weight, or for the reverse, first by weight, and then by creator. Sometimes people have wanted lists in chronological order by date. Sometimes people have ordered multiple lists, sorted in different ways. A popular option has been to get the full lists (>2) ordered alphabetically by name -- probably the best ordering for use of the lists as a study tool -- and also to get printouts in descending order by weight, possibly of just the top of the iceberg.

2.5 cents per title is the cost for an initial purchase. If a person, school or team wishes to reorder updated lists (since we are always continuing to add tournaments to the databases) within the four academic years following their last purchase, they pay only 0.5 cents per title up to whatever weight level they previously purchased at -- regardless of how many more titles may now be in that level. If they initially bought a list at >3, but then wanted to update and upgrade to >2, they'd pay only 0.5 cents per title for the number of titles at >3, and 2.5 cents per title for the remainder. If ordering lists sorted two different ways right off the bat, one list would be at the 2.5 cents rate, but the other would be at the 0.5 cents rate.

It is our hope that a number of schools will come to consider themselves "subscribers" to this service offered by the Carleton team, and will update their lists at regular intervals, taking advantage of the low cost for updated printouts.

If a person, school or team reorders lists from us after an interval of greater than four academic years following their last purchase, they will be charged only 0.5 cents per title for updating the same number of titles purchased previously, but 2.5 cents per title for the remainder.

This page last updated 5 June 2001