This would definitely be useful, and would be simple if records were structured so that the number of pages for books, listening time for audiobooks, etc., were in their own little box that could be treated like the numbers they are. The data is in the record in fairly predictable patterns — books generally have something like 360 p. or 360 pages in 300$a but sometimes have things like viii, 371 p., [8] p. of plates, a little harder to parse out. Audiobooks sometimes have the duration listed like this 14 audio discs (17 1/2 hr.) but sometimes like this10 sound discs (ca. 72 min. each) (at least in our database.) It’s possible the data could be found and formatted, but this sounds complicated (and therefore expensive.) I definitely support the concept, though, and would love it if someone could make this work! (It’s not something I’ve seen in other library catalogs.)
In EBSCO’s NoveList Plus products, you can limit by number of pages or running time in Advanced Search, but that’s presumably because their data is structured differently. For libraries using NoveList, this can be a good way to create lists of adult biographies and memoirs recommended for young adults and less than 300 pages long, but our librarians and patrons would definitely like to be able to just do this on the fly in search!
