Boston Antiquarian Book Fair
Is anyone going to the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair at Boston's Hynes Convention Center tomorrow (Sunday)? Abby and I are going. If you see the two of us strolling around—with black (me) and canary (Abby) LibraryThing t-shirts—say hi.
We're obviously not allowed to sell anything on a regular ticket, but we'll bring a dozen of those CueCat barcode scanners to give out to Thingamabrarians, first-come, first-served.
While LibraryThing has done very well among book-nuts generally, it hasn't necessarily caught on as strong in the high-end antiquarian market. I can think of one of two things we could do, like trying to estimate prices, and allowing members to upload multiple photos. Any ideas?
Here are some of the covers I've received recently:
We're obviously not allowed to sell anything on a regular ticket, but we'll bring a dozen of those CueCat barcode scanners to give out to Thingamabrarians, first-come, first-served.
While LibraryThing has done very well among book-nuts generally, it hasn't necessarily caught on as strong in the high-end antiquarian market. I can think of one of two things we could do, like trying to estimate prices, and allowing members to upload multiple photos. Any ideas?
Here are some of the covers I've received recently:
Labels: antiquarian books, boston
posted by Tim at 12:17 AM
20 Comments:
The 'Collections' feature might help. There's a very strong showcase mentality among collectors (or maybe it's just me) and I for one like the idea of designating special collections within the greater morass of the regular library.
Another feature that would be awesome from an antiquary's point of view would be stats and info on the oldest books on librarything. It would be interesting to see how many 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th century books are catalogued, for example. Fields for condition, bindings, provenance, price, and maybe a crude valuation tool are useful things to have as well.
An option for private fields may also allay privacy worries for collectors who are hesitant about sharing in public certain aspects of their book collection.
Finally - this is a feature I've requested before - is there some way to tell who uploaded a particular cover on the works page? When an antiquarian book cover piques my interest, I'd like to be able to click on the cover and go directly to the owner's book detail page.
At present - unless I'm missing something - the only way to do this for popular books with numerous modern editions is to dig through the catalogues of hundreds of users to determine the owner of a specific cover - often an impossible task.
With the antiquarian book market comes the luxury press market (two often intersecting collector manias). I think there's potential for the growth of both on LT.
On reflection, the fields for condition, type of binding, and provenance aren't that important. The present 'comments' field suffices for that.
A unique price field will be useful for that crude valuation tool though.
I'll be there (again) today ... will try to catch up with you guys. Enjoy the show, it's pretty impressive as always!
Will probably be there! I'll keep an eye out--I'd love to say hi.
Working out age might be tricky - several people use "date" for date-of-writing or date-of-original-publication, not date-of-edition.
A (private?) cost-paid-for-book field would be of use to more than just antiquarian collectors.
I agree that there will always be chaff in the wheat - but that problem is already present to some extent in the 'fun statistics' section of the profile. Or in tags for that matter.
If LT allows us to drill-down into the data to access specific books listed under '18th century,' I don't think the odd modern edition that slips through will cause too much consternation.
It would be cool if you had a flyer which we could download and print out. There are always stacks of leaflets at the book fairs I visit - we could add a stack of LT flyers and spread the word.
Agree with anonymous. A price field and a possibility to search by age would be decent.
The big issue keeping me from entering my meager (about 100 or so) collection is simply the covers. To do it right, each book will have to be scanned and the file saved and uploaded. I just can't stand the thought of those nasty brown default covers. :o/
As an antiquarian cataloguer by day and an LT user by night, I would say that if LT were to try to attract antiquarian collectors specifically, it would need a variety of changes, both in features and in philosophy.
First, the concept of a work is almost entirely useless for antiquarian books. Collectors seek specific editions, sometimes even specific copies, and so it does them no good (indeed, is an unwanted distraction) to connect their 1711 first edition of Bentley's Horace to someone else's Loeb copy. Collectors also don't want to know how many other people have the exact same book as they do. They want to know how few have it, or that their copy is better than the others that exist--the rarity of their books is what makes them desirable.
This makes the social elements of LibraryThing harder to work in, but then the exercise of bibliophilia has never really been a social activity--part of why better privacy controls would be more useful here. What would attract collectors - although all this depends on their being computer-savvy to begin with, which many are not - is a cataloguing tool that is better and more useful for their personal collection, not one that draws (possibly unwanted or inappropriate) social connections.
To that end, for antiquarian books an ISBN-centric organization system is irrelevant. A prominent, powerful, and helpful manual entry system would be necessary; more fields (i.e. provenance, which is very important to some collectors*) would be at the very least useful**; the ability to pull record data from special-collections and rare-books libraries only (The Folger, the Beinecke, etc.) would be nice. An impossible--but wonderful--feature would be integration with significant bibliographies - although few/none of these (to my knowledge) exist in database form. If one could pull records from Goff when entering an incunable, or from Wing for early British books, that could make antiquarian cataloguing almost as easy as using ISBNs.
Being able to estimate prices, while more desirable for collectible books, is also harder; the price difference between a signed jacketed true first in good condition and a signed jacketed second impression of the first edition in good condition seems to make no sense at all. For older books, the condition is still of vital importance and the binding and provenance also must be taken into account. A copy of an old book in a contemporary binding is a very different animal from a copy in a modern binding; one from the library of someone connected with the author or the subject matter is in a separate realm from an undistinguished copy. I doubt a price-estimating program that can incorporate those things is even possible.
In the end I suspect that the necessary changes to become attractive in the antiquarian market are not ones that LibraryThing really should make. Cataloguing antiquarian books is simply more complicated and less immediately rewarding than cataloguing modern books; it has a much smaller potential user group and one that is probably (on average) less interested in computer-based tools in the first place.
But private fields, a place to record price-paid, searching by age; those, at least, would make LibraryThing more powerful for everyone and I'd love to see them regardless.
------
*A simple text field is the minimum that could be done for this. Collectors might want to record the chain of provenance, from the earliest bookplates and inscriptions down to the particular auction or dealer from which they acquired the book. A fielded wiki at the level of individual copies would be good for that. Some might want to add pictures of the bookplates in a particular work.
**Fields for recording of detailed publication information would also be essential. Sometimes the difference between title-pages of different editions of a book is only the order of the names of the publishers in the imprint.
What would attract collectors . . . is a cataloguing tool that is better and more useful for their personal collection,
Yes, please!
the fields for condition, type of binding, and provenance aren't that important. The present 'comments' field suffices for that.
I disagree. I'd like to be able to sort or search by some of these, and you can't do that with the "comments" field. (Yes, I know about "all fields", but that's just the problem - it's ALL fields, not just the one you want.)
I would love to be have a fields for where I purchased a book, and how much I paid for it (especially if the latter were a private field).
RE: the submitted covers.
The panda one is cute, but it's an obvious knock-off of the Penguin cover, and I wonder if you might run into trademark/copyright issues. It might be worth checking into before you're tempted to use it.
One reason I signed up for Librarything was to build a catalog of my (non-antiquarian) library for insurance reasons. If you could provide estimated prices of books that would be awesome!
Another thing I've wanted as I plan my next move: an estimate of how much my library weighs.
I use LT and have quite a few antiquarian books. I entered them by haven't downloaded covers for many as it takes a lot of time.
Fields to add that would be helpful are:
- price paid. I actually have wanted that for all my books for insurance reasons.
- condition. I have used the comments but that is harder. For instance I will put in there whether it has a dust jacket are not.
- where purchased.
- maybe a box to check first edition.
Some of these things are important to collectors.
It is true that LT is set up to combine works and sometimes I have found that a problem as some have combined things that are not the same but we will always have that and you can uncombine if you desire.
I love LT and have gotten lots of people to use: my school's library, and the librarian's personal collection; my brother's churches library and his own library; both of my sisters and I have now shared it with my 11th grade students to start cataloging their libraries.
Keep up the great work.
Agree with the idea of having a price field. We move frequently which is why we our so keen to inventory our books. It would be useful for inventory purposes.
Being able to show and sort on condition is important, as is type of binding and provenance, and whether it is an association copy of some sort - likewise, many collectors, especially of more recent books, may look for autographed editions.
I don't think the social information is irrelevant to a book collector, just different. For example, I don't think average prices have much meaning unless they are average by condition and you can drill down on their source. But tracking information on different listings or sales would be useful - right now, the best single source for listings is abebooks, but those disappear once sold without leaving a record (ebay keeps the record for a period so you can see ebay sales).
First Editions are mostly important for the last century; before that, there can be other editions that are just as interesting and so a simple check off for first edition isn't enough. Detail as to what edition (and printing where that is available, so an edition/printing different can be tracked) is involved by year and by other identifying features (e.g., the "first xx,000" copies in some books, named editions in others). Stats that separate finely by edition would indeed be useful, especially as the site grows.
Finally, tracking ephemera and manuscripts is important to many collectors. Being able to track that there is an inlaid letter from the author in a book, or that you have a manuscript form of someone's poetry or the like would be useful for many.
You should raise the question in the "Rare, Old or Offbeat" group; I'm sure others will have thoughts.
I think fields are needed for:
Condition
Provenance (how obtained)
Type of cover (e.g. buckram)Autographs and margin notes (particularly if by a noteworthy person
Price paid, please (that was one of the first arguments I had in the old Yahoogroup). Condition, obviously. 1st edition doesn't mean most desirable. As I overheard one seller giving an interview when I wandered through the Northern CA Atiquarian show last year, there was an auction of a 14th edition of a novel with a very low start price that went through the stratosphere because it was the edition that included a previously expergated chapter (I've totally forgotten the work now).
Re: the covers -- the navy blue cover with all the curly squiggly lines on it looks exactly like one of the International Collector's Library covers. Are there any image copyright issues we need to think about with this project?
Marie
Actually, I'd like a condition field-we are currently using a combination of tags and comments, and it's unwieldy, also I'd like to keep the comments for other specific things. The collections feature would be good too.
We're modern collectors though, not antiquaries.
For antiquarian books and collectors
Additional images.
Clickable or mouseover larger versions of the book covers or the option of other images for an individual book.
A showcase page (or expanded member page) where one can post a selection of images (with descriptive texts) of special books from their libraries (not just covers, but title pages, spines, illustrations, their library, books on a shelf, etc.)
Some additional fields or changing or expanding existing fields which would be helpfull include:
Date (larger space for circa dating and/or ranges, also be able to sort for BC (or BCE) dated items) or a second date field for date-of-writing, date-of-original-publication, or for un-dated items an approx. date, or dropdown century list).
Type/format (possibly as a drop down menu (manuscript, printed book, pamphlet, magazine, bound magazine volume, newspaper, bound newspaper volume, clipping, photocopied book, poster, photograph, photograph album, audio-book, clay tablet, stone inscription, printed leaf, manuscript leaf, bi-folio, non-book item, etc...))
Edition (1st, 2nd. etc.) and Printing (1st, 2nd, reptint, etc.) both possibly as drop down menus
Publisher (possibly used to create or linked to a info section with printer's marks, pictures, biographies (like Gutenburg, Elviser, Verad, etc.), publishing house histories, dates, etc..)
Condition
Binding (possibly as a drop down menu (as published, trade binding, leather, decorated leather, armoral binding, delux leather, unbound, pothi format, wooden boards, parchment, vellum, blind-stamped vellum, disbound, etc..))
Dust Jacket (possibly as a drop down menu (yes, no, N/A, unknown)and/or with a condition statment)) or a check-off box.
Special notes (limited edition, autographed, etc..)
Purchase Info with price (privacy option would be good)
Provenance (previous owner(s), book plate notes, etc.) privacy option would be good
Inventory or Library catalog number or shelf/bookcase location (Individual catalog, Inventory numbers, or collection information including barcodes in the case of libraries)
Price or value for those who want this, though may be hard to realistically implement.
The book tag fields could also be seperated (subjects, personal tags, etc.) into catagories to help organize what info is added to them.
Since many LT users track and list books they have read a check-box for this might be usefull.
Also, many collectors are interested in books they actually own rather than ones they have simply read or borrowed from the library. A check box to help distinguish which items are actually owned, simply read, library borrowed, etc. would be nice. Or possibly a single check box (on the profile page) for those who are only listing books they read rather than a specific library or collection. This would also let people track their library book usage.
For rare or early books location listings or catalog info from the listings from The National Union Catalog of pre 1956 imprints, The British Museum Catalog of pre 195? imprints, Goff, Wing and other regularly consulted references would be a delight.
Since many library catalogs are on line and used to Add books to ones library, a listing of which libraries also posses copies of a book you have would make a nice addition to the catalog page. This is also a way for people to gage how important or rare a book is.
Of course, with all the various fields with more and specific information, additional search options, clouds, straight lists, could be added and are possible.
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