BookFinder, then "MX BookFinder," in its early days.
By Michael Stillman
BookFinder celebrated a major milestone in longevity last month -- its 10th anniversary. Reaching ten years of age may not sound like much of a milestone to those in the antiquarian book trade, but BookFinder is an internet site, not a book. That was an eternity ago, the age of the dinosaurs (also called "dial-up modems"). According to some old numbers we found, only about 20% of the U.S. population, and 1.5% of the world's had internet access at the time. Today, there are more people on MySpace and YouTube at this very moment than had access to the internet in 1997 (okay, I made up that statistic).
In 1997, the top sites were those that connected your telephone line to the web, ones like AOL, Compuserve and Prodigy. When you wanted to find something, you went to Alta Vista or Infoseek or Excite because no one had ever heard of Google. You still got your browser from Netscape. Microsoft had not yet crushed them. eBay was still known as "Auction Web." File sharing was not an issue since Napster was still a couple of years into the future. So was the internet bubble. Investors had not yet even made the money on internet stocks they would lose when the bubble burst.
It was into this new young universe, still unknown to most of the world, that BookFinder was launched. Anirvan Chatterjee, a 19-year-old Berkeley student, with help from high school friend Charlie Hsu, took the site live on January 30, 1997. Theirs would search multiple bookselling sites, enabling users to find listings all in one place. The only shortcoming was that in those early days, there weren't a lot of bookselling sites to search. However, they did find five, including Amazon, Abebooks (known as "The Advanced Book Exchange" at the time) and Powell's Books. The others are forgotten, but among the earliest participants were Interloc (now Alibris), Bibliocity (merged with Alibris), Antiqbook, BookAvenue and YourBooks. BookFinder searched an inventory of 5 million books then (compared to 125 million today).
Actually, Abe and Alibris weren't the only book sites to undergo name changes. BookFinder itself was known as MX BookFinder when it first went live. Within a year or two it was decided to drop the apparently meaningless "MX" from the name. However, if you type www.mxbookfinder.com or www.mxbf.com into your browser, they will still take you to the BookFinder website.
If you expect sentimentality and reminiscing from BookFinder on this momentous occasion, you will be disappointed. This is a site created by computer wizardry, wonks or geeks or whatever, displaying as much corporate emotion over the milestone as would Mr. Spock. This site is all about technical expertise and function, not hugs and congratulations. When the announcement hit our mailbox, the heading was "Long Tail Book Search Engine Turns 10." Not only is that about as unemotional as it gets, we didn't even understand what it means. We immediately shot back "what is a ‘long tail' search engine?" They provided an explanation and a few links, and we think we more or less get the idea. It is an interesting concept that describes much of what is happening now in terms of internet commerce.
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: CATESBY, MARK. 1683-1749. The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands. $100,000 - $150,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES. 1785-1851. The Birds of America, from Drawings Made in the United States and their Territories. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: ADAMS ON HIS PEAR TREES AND A LOST PORTRAIT BY SALEM ARTIST HANNAH CROWNINSHIELD. ADAMS, JOHN. 1735-1826. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: EARLIEST MAP DEVOTED TO NORTH AMERICA. FORLANI, PAULO. fl.1560-1571. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: HAMILTON DEFENDS THE CONSTITUTION. HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. 1757-1804. $20,000 - $30,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 24: NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION BROADSIDE. Boston, September 14, 1768. $5,000 - $8,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: ONE OF THE EARLIEST ILLUSTRATIONS OF A SURGICAL PROCEDURE. BARTHOLOMAEUS ANGLICUS. $10,000 - $15,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: RICHARD FEYNMAN'S ANNOTATED COPY, WITH TWO EARLY FEYNMAN AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS. $15,000 - $25,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN COMPUTING. TURING, ALAN MATHISON. 1912-1954. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: FINE OIL PORTRAIT OF ALBERT EINSTEIN BY EUGEN SPIRO. $40,000 - $60,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: PENICILLIN MOLD MEDALLION INSCRIBED BY ALEXANDER FLEMING. FLEMING, ALEXANDER. 1881-1955. $30,000 - $50,000
Bonhams, now to Oct. 23: APPLE "TWIGGY" MACINTOSH PROTOTYPE USED IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DEMONSTRATION SOFTWARE. $80,000 - $120,000
One of a Kind Collectibles Auctions Rare Autograph and Book Auction October 17th, 2024
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Abraham Lincoln Signed Letter on Executive Mansion Stationary To Secretary of The Navy re: Appointment for Naval Academy!
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Extremely Rare Ben Franklin Printed: Considerations on Keeping Negroes...Part Second. 1762.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: An impressively extra-illustrated copy; Including an Original leaf from Shakespeare’s 1623 First Folio!
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One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Rarest Naval Autograph James Lawrence “Don’t give up the ship On " U.S. Ship Hornet June 19th 1812.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Oversize Ernest Hemingway Signed Photo with long Inscription about Drinking Wine to his dear friend and Secretary Roberto Herrera.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: VOLTAIRE Signed Receipt about a partial payment of debt for the Duke of Wuerttemberg.
One of a Kind Collectibles Auctions Rare Autograph and Book Auction October 17th, 2024
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: [Maps] Gio. Ant. Magnini, Italia, 1620.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: LAWMAN SALOON JUDGE ROY BEAN Signed Legal Document 1895-RARE!
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Autograph Album with James Garfield as President, Chester A. Aurthur as VP, William T. Sherman, Burnside, P.T. Barnum and many more!
One of a Kind Collectibles Auctions Rare Autograph and Book Auction October 17th, 2024
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison Signed Four Language Ship's Paper.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Hector Berlioz Autograph Musical Quotation Signed.
One of a Kind Collectibles, Oct. 17: Important Memorandum the Day after Gettysburg July 5th, 1863 where Lincoln asks all Department Heads of the cabinet to meet him at the Executive Mansion.
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RareBookBuyer.com We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide ABAA Dealer
RareBookBuyer.com Specialized in Purchasing Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
RareBookBuyer.com We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide ABAA Dealer
RareBookBuyer.com Specialized in Purchasing Institutional Collections & Deacccessioned Books
RareBookBuyer.com We Buy Librairies & Rare Books Nationwide ABAA Dealer
Sotheby’s Bibliotheca Brookeriana: A Renaissance Library. The Aldine Collection D-M 18 October 2024
Sotheby’s, Oct. 18: Herodianus Syrus, Herodiani Historiarum, Venice, Heirs of Aldo & Torresano, 1524, Parisian binding for Jean Grolier by Jean Picard, ca. 1540
Sotheby’s, Oct. 18: Musaeus, Opusculum de Herone et Leandro, Venice, Aldo, 1495 (Greek text), interleaved with 1497–1498 (Latin text), English olive morocco by Charles Lewis, the Botfield copy
Sotheby’s, Oct. 18: Horatius Flaccus, Horatius, Venice, Aldo, 1501, Bolognese brown goatskin (between 1501 and 1503), arms of Mino Rossi and illuminated initials throughout
Sotheby’s, Oct. 18: Lucretius, De rerum natura, Venice, Aldo, 1500, English early eighteenth-century red morocco, the Fletcher copy