As I have written before, it is always preferable to offer duplicates to long standing and faithful bookseller members in the trade, first, before going to the trouble of cataloguing them for sale on line, and effectually competing with the few of us bookseller members who specialize in rare and out-of-print art reference material and support the Society through our membership and our participation as exhibitors at our annual conferences. I am always in the market for such material (especially the rarer exhibition ephemera which often gets dumped - I was heartsick when I heard a rumor about a rare vintage catalogue of “The Eight” that got tossed out, for which I would have paid dearly, if the rumor was true). As bookstores dwindle in number, I find myself more and more buying collections and relying on art libraries to offer me duplicate or unwanted material.
It amazes me that any librarian, whose priorities should be the tasks in their job description (i.e. servicing the public and its academic and curatorial staff) would want to bother with the tedious work of cataloguing mostly inexpensive material and bothering with the labor intensive task of packaging and shipping orders, usually one book at a time (one reason I plan on reissuing catalogues again after an eleven-year hiatus). It usually takes me an average of fifteen minutes per item to catalogue and longer on rarer and more complicated and expensive items. Think of the cost in hourly wages that would accrue to the museum or library attempting to sell on line (and cataloguing such material does not ensure sales – I know).
And in a more personal note:
I’m off for two weeks in search of additional venues for my exhibition which opens June 14, 2014 at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, which hopefully will travel over the next year after it closes in Montgomery on August 31. One museum in North Carolina has already decided to take the exhibition in 2015. Any suggestions will be appreciated. The exhibition is titled “In Time We Shall Know Ourselves: Photographs by Raymond Smith”. (An illustrated checklist with miniature reproductions of the photographs has been posted on the Museum‘s website). It consists of 52 photographs taken on a 1974 road trip, mostly through the South, when I was a graduate student in American Studies at Yale (before I became a bookseller). Photography was then my passion (which I’ve returned to). I had the good fortune to participate in Walker Evans 1971-2 Trumbull College seminar, whose American Photographs (1938) and Robert Frank’s The Americans (1959) provided my inspiration for the road trip. One of the final photographs in the sequence, of which Alexander Nemerov (of Stanford University) has written so eloquently in his essay for the book scheduled for publication next year by fellow ARLIS member Peter Falk, is my homage to Evans “Demopolis, Alabama (for Walker Evans)”; The Gernsheim Collection at the University of Texas obtained a copy of this print back in 1975.
I am counting on my ARLIS colleagues and friends to see that the book is added to their institution’s collection of photography books, and will announce its availability upon publication in the Spring of 2014. It will include one other essay on the photographs by Richard H. King of the University of Nottingham (best known for his work on Hannah Arendt and his book, A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955 – Oxford U.P., 1982, in which he discusses Let Us Now Praise Famous Men). So much for my plug (and again, a request for support of a bookseller member, though in this case I’m wearing a different hat).
Raymond Smith
R.W. Smith Bookseller
New Haven
Museum Library Folks,
We are considering selling our weeded books, duplicates and unwanted donations through an online service like ABE Books or Amazon Marketplace.
If you have had experience with this, I would love to hear about the service you use and any tips you might have. You can reply to me off-list at [log in to unmask]
Thanks so much in advance!
Traci
Traci Timmons, M.A., M.L.I.S.
Librarian, Dorothy Stimson Bullitt Library
Seattle Art Museum
1300 First Avenue
Seattle, WA 98101
Phone: 206-654-3220
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/Learn/Library/SAM.asp
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Mail submissions to [log in to unmask] For information about joining ARLIS/NA see: http://www.arlisna.org/join.html Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc) to [log in to unmask] ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance: http://lsv.arlisna.org Questions may be addressed to list owner (Judy Dyki) at: [log in to unmask]
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