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WebThe Star • Thursday, January 15, 1998A new pageInternet helps move ‘pokey’ little stores into the big leagueBy Charles |. ShieldsI needed a used book: David McCullough’s 1993 Pulitzer-prize-winning “Truman” — a first edition, clean copy, dust-jacketed, and reasonably priced to give as a gift.I went to Autumn Leaves Books, Inc., a used book store in Homewood.I gave Charles Spohrer — who owns Autumn Leaves with his wife, Darlene — all the particulars. He didn’t have a copy, but he made notes of everything I said. He said he’d search for it.I thanked him and went home, not expecting to hear anything for four to six weeks.That’s because I knew the process — at least I thought I did — of searching for a used or rare book.First, a used book dealer who conducts searches for books — not all of them do — compiles an alphabetical list of the books he or she is looking for. Then copies of the list are sent to other dealers all over the country A few reply saying they have the book and quoting a price, along with a description of the condition of the book.The dealer then contacts the client and tells the person the book has been found The client says yes or no to the price, but mustn’t wait too long — the book could be sold to someone else.Let’s say the client says yes.The book is sent for. It comes through the mail by book rate. The client pays for the book, and has it at last.Total time — “soup to nuts,” as the saying goes? Six to eight weeks.But in my case, I asked Spohrer to find me “Truman” at 4:09 p.m. I arrived home at 4:35 p.m. There was an e-mail message on my computer. It said.“We’ve located a good clean, first edition copy of Truman’ on thecampus of the University of Pennsylvania. The price is $33. Do you want it?I replied “yes.”Total time: 26 minutes.This is an improvement, in my book.Now, admittedly, the actual copy didn’t arrive for 10 days, but that illustrates again how the Internet is galloping past and overtaking conventional ways of communicating and doing business.On another front in the book business, for instance, The New York Times offers a free service on the Internet called “First chapter” (nytimes.com/books/home/).Users can read the first chapters of books the Times has reviewed, then go to the on-line bookstore, Amazon.com., — one of a number of bookstores on-line — and order a copy of the book, usually at a discounted price.Total time from reading the first chapter to having a copy of the book in your hands? Four days. One day, if you want to pay for next day service.Some of the other large bookstores with Web sites are alt. bookstore (altbookstore.com); Book-serve, (http://speedserve.com/ homepage/bookserve. html); Barnes and Noble (bamesandnoble.com) and Powells (powells.com/).Dozens of on-line bookstores specializing in mysteries, science fiction and fantasy, the Civil War, and feminist literature have their own sites A few of them aren’t “stores” at all, not in the usual way. You can’t find them on any street in any city. They're just someone with a computer, an expertise in literature, and a web site, who puts books in the hands of customer- readers Spohrer says the Internet puts what used to be a pretty pokey business — trafficking in out-of-print, used, specialty, or hard-to-BookWire (www.bookwire.com) is the most comprehensive on-line boolt,. industry information site around. It features breaking news and bestseller lists from the bible of the book industry, Publishers Weekly; Authors on the Highway, the last word on author appearances and tours; Soapbox, a place where people in and around the book business can talk; Publishers’ Spotlight, a paid feature where publishers and authors put their titles in the spotlight; thousands of annotated and intelligently organized links to book-related sites; and crackeijack writing from heavyweights like The Hungry Mind Review, The Boston Book Review andBookBrowser (www bookbrowser.com) is a collection of fiction reading** lists. Its purpose is to help avid fiction readers find books and authors,.' * Lists are arranged by genre, location, series and anything else that might be helpful.SeniorNet (www.seniomet.comi, a national nonprofit organization, designed to build a community of computer-using seniors, has several, active book clubs going on — Great Books, mystery, adventure, a general book club and more. Registration is required to post, but not to read, and* the registration is free and open to people of all agesThe nation’s library, the Library of Congress, is the world’s largest repository of knowledge. Its site at http://lcweb.loc.gov/homepage/greetr ing.html offers portions of the American historical collections, as well as the library’s catalog, the text and images from mtyor exhibitions, historical information on the U.S. Congress, and a Learning Page for K-12 students and teachers, and much more.The Library of Congress’ National Digital Library Program offers access to key documents, films, photographs and sound recordings of our nation’s history in the American Memory Historical Collections. American Memory is designed to bring the most interesting and important original documents of our history and culture into schools, libraries and homes everywhere.By Charles J. Shieldsfind books — into the same league as big bookstore chains.“The competitive advantage really lies in how well we service the customer, he says.The Internet has made the search process easier and faster and more informative. We use the Library of Congress to confirm the name of an author or to get a list of an author’s books.“We even use Amazon.com to verify if a book is in print and readily available from a ‘new book’ bookstore. And we use the Internet book search services to identify the dealers who may have the book in question.“In fact, Amazon uses the same Internet book search services for its out-of-print searches as we do. We have even sold a couple of books to them recently.Libraries are finding that the Internet can enhance their services, too.“We have patrons come in who enjoy a particular type of book, say romance, or mystery, or stories about animals, and we can recommend more titles for them using the Internet,” said Mary Lynn Mysz, readers’ services librarian at the Oak Lawn Public Library.Mysz said on-line bookstores, authors’ personal Web sites —Judy Blume has an extensive one, for example — and sites maintained by people who just love books, are resources that didn’t exist less than five years ago.Reference librarians find the Internet breathes new life into venerable old stand-bys like encyclopedias that used to wait silently on shelves, row-on-row.In December, for instance, Bri-tannica Online (eb.com) premiered a photo essay on the Titanic to coincide with the opening of the motion picture.Historic photos illustrated events surrounding the ocean liner disaster; details on topics such as icebergs, and the creation of the International Ice Patrol, and biographies of individuals involved in the accident.The site showcased 60 photographs from Susan Well’s recently published book “Titanic: Legacy of the World’s Greatest Ocean Liner” as well as Internet links to relevant Titanic-related Web sites.On the other hand, the Internet draws people to libraries for less academic reasons, too.At the Oak Lawn Public Library, the reference desk routinely fields this question: “When are more Beanie Babies coming out?“A site answers that, too.
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Crete Star
Crete, Illinois, US
Thu, Jan 15, 1998
Page 18
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Veronica A.
USA 02 Oct 2024
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