Rare Book Monthly
Articles - September - 2002 Issue
Using the Americana Exchange Resources to Their Fullest Potential
AE Database Preliminary Search Screen
So what’s the catch, you are probably asking yourselves at this point in the article. Indeed, there is a catch, but not an insurmountable one, and it is this: in order to attain optimal value from our site, you need to first understand the research resources that each AE module offers and how to use them. That is where this article comes in. This article is intended to quantify that which is abstract by creating for the sake of illustration a series of real life scenarios which will demonstrate the purpose and potential of Americana Exchanges key research features.
Now Im going to do something dreadful: Im going to ask you to engage in a creative exercise. For a few minutes try and suspend your dislike for hypotheticals as well as your disbelief and imagine this situation: your distant Great Aunt Harriet has passed away, having lived a long and productive life. Strangely, you discover that although you barely knew Great Aunt Harriet she has left her entire 100 piece collection of books by Theodore Roosevelt to you. (You didn’t know that she had this driving interest in Teddy Roosevelt either, but that is another story.) This inheritance leaves you with a dilemma (other than that of figuring out why Great Aunt Harriet left you the books in the first place): you need to decide whether you are going to keep the books, grow the collection, give it away, or sell it for a profit. Your decision of course depends to a great extent on the issues that we touched on earlier in this piece: you need to know how important and rare these books are as Americana items. So, naturally, you turn to the Americana Exchange for some help with these questions.
You can begin your investigation by entering AE’s Auction Module. As a free AE member you can check the regularly updated calendar of upcoming auctions and click the auction house link directly into the auction house and browse a particular sale or sales. Read through the detailed list of upcoming auction lots within the upcoming sales to see if any of the auctions feature works by Theodore Roosevelt. If you do find lots that include works by Roosevelt, you can begin to get a feel for estimated prices and relative rarity of specific Theodore Roosevelt works.
If you are a paid AE member, you can take the Auction Module several steps further: when filling out your Member Registration Questionnaire, you can indicate that you are interested in being alerted about any auction involving Presidential material produced during Theodore Roosevelt’s era (you do this when you are filling out your list of preferences in the Americana field, which offers a choice of nearly 100 main and subcategories from which you select your collecting preferences.) AE will regularly categorize Americana lots in upcoming auctions according to this same list of nearly 100 subjects and will automatically send an email alert to all subscribers when a lot appears in any upcoming sale in your indicated subject area(s) of interest. In other words, when your chosen categories match those in any upcoming sale we will email you with a list of matching lots, a link to the auction site and a bridge back to the AE to check the referenced items against entries in our database. This service is both a spectacular time as well as a money saver.
