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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Although I am a fan of Amazon.com, I have been less than thrilled with the reulsts of their out-of- print service. They have twice shipped me broken sets without informing me of such, or of their even knowing that the title was a multi-volume publication! I am located in Thailand, so to return the unwanted books to Amazon.com, who is willing to take them back, is often more costly than the title. they are also buying books off the usual suspects, ABEbooks.com, Interlock.com, etc. at ridiculous markups. I know they're loosing money, but when I deal with their out-of-print service so am I . At http://www.powells.com one can find excellent used hard copies of countless titles for about the same price as a new paperback from Amazon. For most institutions and librarians, budgets are no joking matter. To get the same title at usually a 30-50 % savings is significant. Bruce Miller SDI Publications Judy Dyki wrote: > > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > At Cranbrook Academy of Art Library, we also have an institutional > purchasing card (i.e., Mastercard), so we often take advantage of > Amazon.com's ease of ordering and speed of delivery. Since many of their > titles are discounted 20-30%, we've found that their discounts usually > match or exceed those offered to us by Baker & Taylor (our acquisitions > volume is too small to qualify for B&T's larger discounts) . I am careful > to order many titles at once and batch the shipments to keep down the > shipping costs -- again, they are no worse than B&T when handled in this > way. I have also used Amazon.com's out-of-print search service several > times with excellent results. > > If you have an institutional credit card, I highly recommend Amazon.com for > library acquisitions! > > Judy Dyki > Cranbrook Academy of Art Library > [log in to unmask]