By Bruce McKinney

Building the American Exchange website has been like building a tire. For it to be effective it has to be complete. A portion of the tread may be interesting but it takes a very imaginative person to see what a portion of the tread can portend. This month, with the introduction of Æ MatchMaker we place the hub, wheel, tire and spokes all in their appropriate place and sequence so that members may see and understand what we are really getting at: a complete and integrated group of services for the Americana field.

The piece we introduce this month, MatchMaker, permits members to identify material that’s of interest; to post it both to the net (as an upload to ABE and to upcoming auctions to look for "matches"; and to receive notification of "matches" as they occur. As well we introduce "Keyword Matches" for auctions, a huge advance for the auction houses, for their current clients and for the literally thousands of future customers who will be attracted "by matches" in upcoming auctions to bid for the first time. These are important new services. Click here to have a feel of the MatchMaker.

The book dealer, the collector and the librarian have essentially the same problem: they want to locate new material to add to their inventory, their collection or their stacks. They are each searching for material. Our approach locates material. It does it book by book. It finds material on the net and it finds it in upcoming auctions as well. It does it effortlessly and allows you to deal with newly found material quickly. It doesn’t involve time consuming searches. Rather, once you establish what it is you are after, it looks for you and it does it continuously. Here is how it works.

We start with our Database. the ÆD. It currently has more than 380,000 full text records in the Americana field to which we add about 6,000 new records weekly. We have now added a new field to each record in the ÆD, “Add to Want List.” Once selected, each record is added to your "Provisional Want List". This list then appears as a pop-up window. Maneuver it to one side because the ÆD remains on your screen but perhaps is hidden behind it. Continue to add records to your "Provisional Want List." If you happen to add the same source record twice MatchMaker will ignore the second request. Once you have built a preliminary list you can divide it into more specific folders such as Civil War, Louisiana or Abraham Lincoln. From these folders you can upload your selected records as "Wants" to the Net. The same list is also compared to all upcoming auctions for matches.

Æ Database and Auction Notices Members ($74.50 annually) may select 250 titles to upload until August 1st as a free trial offer. You may change these titles as often as you wish although the titles will be uploaded to the net only once per day. Until they are uploaded they’ll simply be on the runway. These titles will be compared to online titles every day for "matches."