Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2010 Issue
The New AE - Coming to a Computer Near You
Every search: 3 results
Experience and personal judgment will still be determining but the collector, institution and dealer lucky enough to have great material is going to have more choices and an easier time to establish value and find the person on the other side of a potential transaction because of the triangulated database approach. The book business has become a group of mammoths that have functioned along the continuum of from fair to fabulous but both current collectors increasingly and new collectors generally will expect all books, as spectacular and interesting as they are, to make economic sense while instilling rapture. It's simply that kind of world. I love you but may I also inspect your teeth.
The approach we take is to offer 2.8 million full text auction records in the presence and context of on average 10,000 items up for consideration at auction and 1 to 2 million mostly collectible items in books for sale. A search of any one database brings up the results of the same search in the other databases. A search of the AED unearths copies in Books for Sale. A copy in Books for Sale triggers matches both in upcoming auctions and the AED. Never mind signing in. We'll tell how many results we have simply because you ask. In tests with beta testers there are two kinds of searches; the very large and the very small. A search for London finds 530,682 records in the AED, 115,883 in Books for Sale, 237 at auction while Hill's Profitable Instruction finds, in the blink of an eye, 1 copy at auction, none in BFS and 4 records in the AED. A search for maps finds 317,770 records in the AED, 30,289 in Books for Sale, 44 in upcoming auctions. Medicine finds 4 records in upcoming auctions, 12,198 records in Books for Sale and 64,669 in the AED. Proust finds 2 records in upcoming auctions, 254 in Books for Sale, 5,505 in the AED; valentine 3 in upcoming auctions, 872 in Books for Sale, 3,440 in the AED. In other words almost every search provides substantial results. If you misspell your search term we'll even offer alternatives. Toward the end of the month we'll add tracking. That is, if you see an item or items of interest we'll provide a "click to follow." If in an upcoming sale you'll have the option to be emailed the result. Alternatively you can select "continue to follow" and we'll then notify you if/when future copies are posted either to auction or to Books for Sale.
To facilitate identification we'll begin to add a number in a circle (-9-) next to titles in the AED that are followed. Then if that item is posted at auction or to Books for Sale we'll notify each tracking account as well as the auction or dealer posting - that (-9-) notices were sent. We will not disclose the identity of those tracking but of course if they show up on your electronic doorstep at 9:00 am on the morning matches are released you'll know why. We are determined to make the market efficient.
In time we hope to match buyers every day with the material they want. It's a free service.
Overall the updates are a chance for the market to coalesce around an information based approach to collecting. In time, under the gathering penumbra of ever more expressions of interest, we hope to encourage a new generation of collectors to interact with the history of books, auctions in the present, and dealers' listings on demand - all to encourage collecting. The field will prosper as the methodologies transform.
For the entire field this is an important moment. We expect to release within the week. As we release we'll send out an announcement.
