ACQNET v1n026 (February 12, 1991) URL = http://www.infomotions.com/serials/acqnet/acq-v1n026 ACQNET, Vol 1, No. 26, February 12, 1991 ======================================== (1) FROM: Editor SUBJECT: Who's new on ACQNET today (17 lines) (2) FROM: Christian Boissonnas SUBJECT: BookQuest at Cornell (151 lines) (1) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: February 12, 1991 From: Editor Subject: Who's new on ACQNET today Carolyn Bucknall Assistant Director for Collection Development University of Texas at Austin E-mail: LLCFB@UTXDP.BITNET Mark Haslett Acquisitions Librarian McMaster University Library E-mail: HASLETT@MCMASTER.BITNET Ann Okerson Director, Office of Scientific & Academic Publishing Association of Research Libraries E-mail: OKERSON@NSSDCA.SPAN.NASA.GOV (2) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: February 12, 1991 From: Christian M. Boissonnas Subject: BookQuest at Cornell Before the last ALA meeting there were queries on ACQNET about BookQuest. I mentioned that I was doing a study of it to be presented at the ALCTS Northeast Regional Acquisitions Institute which will be in Boston this Spring. I also said that I would write some sort of interim report for ACQNET. This is it. BOOKQUEST EXPLAINED BookQuest is a service of ABACIS, Inc., a Faxon company based in Maryland. The heart of the service is a database of books held by antiquarian bookstores, and titles wanted by libraries. Before a record is added, it is searched against the existing file. If a match is found, the party wanting the title is notified via an e-mail message that it is available, and give the name and e- mail address of the pertinent seller. Customers access the database by dialing in to ABACIS through an 800 number. They can query the file, add and maintain records, read and send e-mail messages to other participants. They are billed $50 per connect hour or part thereof that they use, plus $2.00 for each title bought or sold. It is also possible to send records to ABACIS on diskettes to be batch-loaded. In this case, when records exceed 200 per batch, ABACIS charges no connect time fee. There is a companion service, SerialsQuest, for listing serial titles. I am not using it and will not discuss it here. THE CORNELL STUDY Like other librarians I find obtaining out-of-print materials problematic. I thought that BookQuest could be a wonderful tool in my searches. If a book I wanted was listed for sale by someone, my search was ended. All I had to do was tickle a few keys and, presto, the book was mine. My hypothesis, therefore, was that BookQuest, at its current price, is a worthwhile tool for Cornell to use to buy out-of-print books. Last September I gathered citations for 271 U.S. imprints that had been declared out-of-print by vendors from whom we had tried to obtain them. I made sure that they weren't available from the UK. It was not a random sample of titles. It was all the titles for which we had received OP reports since the Spring. The breakdown, by type of publisher was: No. of titles - Trade (1) 184 - Societies, associations 25 - Corporations 9 - Museums, libraries 6 - Personal authors as publishers 13 - University presses 13 - University departments 9 - Others/unsure 12 --- TOTAL 271 (1) loosely defined as published by a commercial publisher, whether scholarly, small press, or major firm with lots of titles, and regardless of subject matter. I searched those in BookQuest, and listed those which I couldn't find. By January 31, 1991, we had accumulated 28 hits. In other words, in 28 instances we found a listing in the first search, or we got an e-mail message telling that the book we wanted was available. Here is how those broke down: - Trade 26 - Societies, associations 1 - Museums, libraries 1 Here was the distribution by bookseller listing or offering the books: - Strand Bookstore 11 - Book Castle 1 - Bond Street Books 3 - CGT Co. 1 - John Gatch 1 - Argosy 4 - Book Look 1 - Other 4 Here's what finally happened to the 26 books: - Bookseller listed the book, we ordered it, but bookseller turned out not to have 13* - Bookseller offered edition other than that which we had specified 2** - Bookseller had sold the book, even though we had said we wanted it 2 - We turned down the offer. Book too expensive 1 - Bookseller offered title that we had not asked for. Not merely a different ed, but a completely different title 2 - We ordered the book and we received it 7*** - We ordered the book and failed to receive it or a report 1 * In some cases denied that the listing was theirs. ** In one case what we wanted was part of a set which the bookseller was unwilling to break. *** Including one edition other than the one we had specified. We returned it. Fill rate: 7/271 = 3% This compares with an average of 30% when sending requests directly to book- stores and listing wanted titles in _The Library Bookseller_, which had been our experience prior to trying BookQuest. Cost of BookQuest so far: $131.74, or $18.82 per title received. So much for my hypothesis. Here's what we are doing now. We are preparing a second batch of titles to list in BookQuest, to test the assumption that it will be better now because the file keeps growing. Also, we are sending all unfilled requests from the batch of 271 to our usual sources. We will send the new batch we are preparing for BookQuest simultaneously to our usual sources. I will report these results at the Institute in Boston. At that time I will also discuss in detail the BookQuest software itself. I want to give ABACIS the benefit of the doubt and give them a chance to come up with the absolutely best version they can before I crucify them. I am assuming that what we are working with is still in development. It certainly feels like it. CONCLUSIONS These, of course, are tentative. 1. BookQuest is a wonderful idea. I want it to work. It should work for libraries that want what the booksellers who participate are selling. Unfortunately, that is not the kind of stuff that we are looking for. 2. It would not take many hits to make the cost of acquiring this kind of material quite low. If our hit rate had been 30%, matching what we get elsewhere, the BookQuest cost per title would have been $1.63. I would pay a lot more than that to not have to prepare lists and send them to a bunch of stores. 3. The database will have to be a lot larger before it starts to include the kinds of titles for which I am looking. I would say triple or quadruple its current size, and have a lot more scholarly titles. 4. There are lots of records that don't belong there because the book is no longer available. Database maintenance is going to be a major problem. 5. At $19 per title, for Cornell, it is not worth it. If that price holds true in the second batch, we will stop using it. ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE ***** END OF FILE *****