By Bruce McKinney
Ten years ago the changing functionality of libraries was, to many, already clear. Libraries would become electronic information gatherers and redistributors and their relationship to the printed word atrophy and decline. Libraries, the repository of books, would become the repository of information. The book, as storage and redistribution element, would be replaced by the database and, in time, the full text search. Libraries, the stodgy backwater of the intellectual revolution, would soon become its Omaha Beach. Five years ago sixty percent of librarians we surv...
By Bruce McKinney
The book business, like the stock market, was a growth business for many years. Auction realizations increased and listing sites proliferated. Higher prices and the expectati...
By Michael Stillman
One of the uglier criminal book theft cases came to its legal conclusion earlier this year when David Slade, Past President of England's Antiquarian Booksellers Association, ...
By Michael Stillman
"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." It was the greatest statement of human rights at least since the Magna Carta, over half a millennium earlier. This statement of "...
By Bruce McKinney
This past month I used Google Books, the word-by-word search of eight million full text books, to look for buried references for the once vibrant and now mostly forgotten commu...
By Michael Stillman
It's coming to a Kindle near you, and it's as ugly as it is inevitable. Remember when the value of subscription television channels was that you didn't have to watch advertis...
By Bruce McKinney
For only the second time in the past year an entire month of auction results is providing positive comparisions to the previous month. It's an encouraging sign that the marke...
By Michael Stillman
The search engine wars may not seem a topic related to the book trade, but of course it is. An increasing number of book sales are generated from search engines, and for thos...
By Bruce McKinney
Paid members of AE know what the AED is. It is the Americana Exchange online Database of more than 2.15 million records for books, manuscripts, and ephemera. It is available ...
There are twelve bookseller catalogues under review for August. Americana is the subject of catalogues from Michael Brown Rare Books and Seneca Books. The Lawbook Exchange features pre-1900 America...
