Subject:
reprint publishers
From:
"LANGE, JANICE P." <LIB_JPL_at_shsu.edu>
I am noticing more books available through regular book vendors that are
either self-published books or reprints of material out of copyright.
The "reprints" may be missing illustrations, proper attribution to the
original publisher, and original dates of publication. The material is
being passed off as recently published, when it is actually recently
PRINTED. The "publisher" may not be the same as the one listed on the
order. Only the author and title match an OCLC cataloging record. The
publisher, date, and pagination are way off!
In a recent example, my library ordered "Aids to Forensic Medicine and
Toxicology" through Baker and Taylor (they had a record in their
database). The publisher was Lightning Press, with a publication date
of 2006. The publisher listed in our copy was IndyPublish.com. We paid
about $75 discounted, and the item is non-returnable (of course).
A search of OCLC reveals eleven editions of the title, from the 1800's
to about 1939. Reprints of prefaces to the 8th edition and the 9th
edition are included in our copy, with dates in the 1920's, so we
obviously have an OLD book that is being marketed as a 2006 imprint. A
little more investigation revealed that the book is listed on Project
Gutenberg, freely available. I noticed that the "publication" date on
our printed copy is a couple of months after the Project Gutenberg text
was made available (for free).
I would like to know how other libraries are handling these items. We
try not to order them, but reprint and print-on-demand publishers
abound, with different names, so keeping track of the publisher names
seems to be a losing battle. Are libraries able to instruct their
vendors not to send these titles even if the library inadvertently
orders one of them?
If you would like to reply off-post, I will summarize responses for the
list.
Thanks,
Janice Lange
Lib_JPL_at_shsu.edu
Assistant Director
Newton Gresham Library
Sam Houston State University
Huntsville, TX 77341-2179
Phone: 936/294-1620
Fax: 936/294-3780
Received on Tue Dec 04 2007 - 02:59:16 EST