Having had some experience working in libraries, including university libraries, your proposed experiment above is meaningless, There are a lot of factors that impact collection development, least of which is whether a particular subject is deemed "mainstream" or "esoteric". Furthermore, the current peer-reviewed literature generally doesn't appear in monograph form for a number of years. It appears in journals, and increasingly, e-journals.Pannapetar wrote: But let me suggest an experiment. We both go to our local university's library, psychology department. There we try to assess the number of books on well-being and compare it to the number of books on a mainstream topic such as cognitive psychology and to the number of books on an esoteric subject such as transpersonal psychology. Where would you expect the numbers to come in? You could also quickly check the Wikipedia list of disciplines in psychology or the index of psychology topics. I don't even find "well-being" or "happiness" in there, but I do find transpersonal psychology. What does this suggest?
I can go on and on, but its not important and incidental.
So I think this is a good point to request that everyone return to the topic
Thanks for your cooperation
Ben