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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Although I agree that Amazon.com is an excellent place for art librarians to find discounted in-print titles, I think that it is a truly rotten place for libraries to find out-of-print material. As Bruce Miller pointed out in his response to Ms. Dyki s posting, Amazon is less than stellar when one considers their mistakes with out-of-print material. His sort of bad experience with Amazon s o.p. service is bound to be repeated by many others. My feeling as a bookseller and member of the firm Ars Libri, specialists in out-of-print Art History material, is that libraries are infinitely better served by working with established dealers rather than by computer-program generalists such as Amazon.com. The world of out-of-print material is much bigger than the internet. Specialist booksellers have years of knowledge of institutional collections, personal collections, publishing history, etc. Sure Amazon.com and others might be able to offer garden variety book matching for certain titles, but you will certainly not be able to count on them for a cohesive program of retroactive collection development. Another big consideration is price. Amazon.com needs to add some sort of mark up to make any money on out-of-print books. They find their material through internet searches only and are able to buy only from antiquarian booksellers who are on the internet. Unlike dealing with publishers (where Amazon probably receives a 50-60% discount, they are receiving usually a 10% discount from an antiquarian dealer. Amazon thens add their mark up. The bottom line is that if you buy an out-of-print book from Amazon, you have paid too much. Each day we receive dozens of inquiries from them. It is likely that some of these come from ARLIS members. I think it makes economic sense to libraries to deal directly with antiquarian booksellers rather than a middle man like Amazon.com. Librarians can duplicate Amazon s methods exactly by using the internet search sites such as abe, bibliofind, or even mxbf to sample several sites. Further, they can also do the thing that Amazon will never do- speak with dealers like Ars Libri about out-of-print subject needs. Perhaps in the future Amazon will be able to offer great antiquarian and rare book service, but for now I believe in the bookseller. John Rutter Ars Libri, Ltd. 560 Harrison Avenue Boston, MA 02118 USA Tel. (617)357-5212 Fax (617)338-5763 email: [log in to unmask] http://www.arslibri.com