Rare Book Monthly
Ten Days Away
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By Bruce McKinney
The Æ is an intensely interesting project. It is also one that makes substantial demands. There are deadlines for the Æ Monthlyand there constant requirements for new material for the Æ Database. Nevertheless, with some planning it was possible to take ten days for my son Tom and me to travel to the East Coast. My goal was to visit book dealers, purchase potential material for the Æ Database, visit libraries and meet librarians. Tom’s goal was to visit a variety of colleges (he’ll be a senior at the Urban High School in San Francisco this fall) to get a feel for the advantages and disadvantages of small and large schools in rural, suburban and urban settings. Given the breathtaking cost of college educations these days it is very important to make an informed decision.
On June 15th we flew to Cleveland, Ohio. We hadn’t been on a flight since 9/11 and were expecting the airport experience to be arduous. It wasn’t. At the Oakland, California Airport there were more checks and procedures than in the past but it was smooth and professional. Air travel is never going to be perfect but everyone we encountered was courteous. Courtesy, often the first star to disappear in the night sky, shown brightly at every stage and step of the trip and that says something very good about America.
We flew first to Cleveland to see John Zubal of Zubal Books (www.zubal.com ) John is an original. He runs a substantial book business out of two department store sized buildings on Cleveland’s south side. I know and like the smell of old books but I never knew the scent could be so pleasantly deep. If you have ever opened a box of old books and felt you were breathing the air of 200 years ago (and liked it) you will understand what I mean. The Americana Exchange covers a relatively small portion of the broad sweep of printed material. John’s inventory covers virtually its entire range. A tour of the warehouses suggests that John is the legitimate heir to the great book collectors of the 19th century, though the material simply passes through his hands on its way to libraries, collectors and dealers around the world. Zubal Books is a Harvard Business School study in the making, itself a piece of future ephemera that no doubt will pass through Zubal Books many times at reasonable if rising prices.
This is a family business and his wife, Marilyn, daughter Jean Marie and sons Michael and Thomas are all actively involved. The business is electronic and the marketplace is the internet. Orders arrive online and are sent first to the picking and then shipping departments. They employ a numbering system to identify items in inventory that allows item number 46789 and 234564 to be equally easily located. Scale demands efficiency and they have figured out how to do it.
