LISTSERV 16.5 - ARLIS-L Archives

I agree with Gary. Some art and architecture books tend to become expensive over time, even quickly, but it's a different concept from special collections. It's more like "medium rare" to quote a colleague of mine. It's the nature of the beast, smallish print runs, specialized or disciplinary topics, high quality illustrations. It is hard to keep up with the pricing differentiation, unfortunately. I have just identified a book that went missing from our open stacks, because it currently sells for over $2K (Aldo van Eyck's Orphanage, published in 1996 by NAI publishers). I am not sure I can call it rare, but I am amazed that it has become so expensive (49 pages, I believe). Needless to say, this is a somewhat exaggerated case.

Approaching this from the perspective of access and security may be the way to go. Should users be able to photocopy/scan/photograph from a book that costs $200-$500 to replace, yet is not the original Audubon (which presumably requires somewhat different handling)? Should users have to go through a special request procedure for medium rare materials in the way they often do when requesting to use special collections items? Etc.

BTW, if someone messes up an expensive book, we actually charge them the cost of the book's replacement, not the standard replacement fee. Not fun at all.