REGARDING A NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE WITH LINK AND EXCERPT BELOW:
Rare book dealers are finding that the internet is a
method of expanding their book store businesses into a world wide market
rather than that at the corner of two streets in one or another city.
The scale at which Alibris is operating in this business is like comparing
molecules to mountains, as a corporation is being estabished by Alibris by
blowing the dust off of quite a few rare books and changing their
ownership. This article is quite a valuable profile of both the rare book
market in general and the way the internet is expanding its sales. In
particular, this article is a very good profile of the Alibris business,
its history and current operations.
Speaking of rare and old, there has been quite a
transition in libraries in accessing old and even newer runs of
periodicals that are scholarly covering a broad range of fields. The new
service is described by the term aggregators, and journal aggregators are
changing the way members of subscribing colleges and institutions do
research. You remember that old one about not taking periodicals out of
the library. Well if you are on a computer with the ISP of the subsribing
institution you can look at complete back sets of periodicals from
aggregators like JSTOR and MUSE as well as search in databases that have
full text periodical content like ProQuest Direct and others.
Substantial periodical collections can be used at home on the computer and
distance education will be a major beneficiary of this type of
development.
Speaking of old books, there are collections of classic
books available full text at no cost on the internet. These books are no
longer under copyright. One such major collection is Project Gutenberg
that may be found at URL:
This collection is very large and a complete list may be obtained as a
zipped file. Both titles and authors can be browsed by a letter of the
alphabet from a number of mirrored sites. The collection is searchable by
author name or title keyword as well. The final result is that one can sit
in front of their computer and read the complete text of all of these
works. There are quite a few universities that have created websites of
electronic text monograph collections and one of these good sites is the
site at the University of Pennsylvania:
The On-Line Books Page
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/
Finally there is a very good link on the Eduational
Cyberplayground to a Web Directory of Repositories of Primary Resources
that include rare books on this part of the Cyberplayground:
My Collection of Interesting Sites
CYBRARIANS / LIBRARIANS
Web Directory: Repositories of Primary Sources:
http://www.cyberplayground.net/Technology/interest.html#c
The internet with its competition as a repository of old
books and other materials is beginning to put libraries on the grill with
its stake as a medium of rare.
Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204-4584
jwne@astro.temple.edu
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Source: New York Times (NYT)
Author: DOREEN CARVAJAL
Title: An Upstart Upsets the Old Book Cart
Source Date: April 19, 2000
Resource Type: News Article
Description/Keywords: Rare Books, Book Stores, Antiquarian,
Competition, Size of Business, Alibris, Business Alliances, Major
Companies, Internet Businesses, Business Growth, Retail Book Industry
URL: Listed Below Article Summary
(Free Registration Required by the New York Times)
April 19, 2000
An Upstart Upsets the Old Book Cart
By DOREEN CARVAJAL
For decades, the antiquarian and used book trade has remained the
dusty, genteel corner of the book market, attracting fiercely independent
booksellers who savor the musty fragrance of brown-spotted rag paper and
the eureka moment of spotting a rare first edition dumped in a garage sale
heap.
But now the dust motes are flying in the rare and used book market
with the flashy emergence of Alibris. The privately held online seller of
used books has Wall Street ambitions, Silicon Valley money and a strategy
that is roiling one of the last bastions of the book market where small
dealers still hold sway. With financial resources totaling more than
$60 million in venture capital, Alibris is a mix of Internet start-up and
industry upstart, a two-year-old company with a cheeky national
advertising campaign aimed at building a mighty brand on the spines of old
books.
"The business has never had this public
persona," said Susan Siegel, who with her
husband annually publishes "The Used
Book Lover's Guides," a series of seven
regional handbooks. "It's just been these
little stores that bookaholics and collectors
and academics know about. The Internet
has changed that, and Alibris is dealing with
customers in a more sophisticated marketing
way that was never needed before."
"The Internet has enabled many sellers of used books to expand
their customer base to the entire world," Ms. Siegel said. Sales over the
Web make up from 10 to 50 percent of gross sales for the dealers she has
tracked. But the great majority of these dealers are tiny operations. By
contrast, Alibris has a growing staff of 100 at its administrative offices
in Emeryville, Calif., a warehouse of books in Sparks, Nev., and another
distribution warehouse planned for England.
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