FINDING THAT BOOK in Postcards 4

Once long, long ago I asked my librarian friend Katy, sitting up there on the bench with me, how to find a book. She mentioned that she used ABE books to look for books at her bookstore job. For years I looked books up on ABE. Only later did I discover Alibris books. Now I can tell you that I’ve discovered many more book search tools.

Two weekends ago, one family donated a large collection of Nautical books to our ACS. We usually sell our books very cheaply. Very. Two bucks for most hardbounds and one dollar for each paperback. The moment I looked into the first of these boxes, I knew we couldn’t sell these quality volumes for one or two dollars.

I have a tiny collection of nautical books, and I’m a member of several Ocean Liner spots. I follow a few of these authors on Facebook like Bruce Peter. Nowadays there is a larger selection of search engines just for books. ABE is still fast and easy, but if you put the author’s name into BookFinder.com, almost every book Peter has written appears and lists the site that has it and by price.

As an example, searching for just one Peter book on BookFinder, “Danish Ship Design, 1936-1991: The Work of Kay Fisker and Kay Korbing,” my monitor fills with book search sites. If you click on the first listing, Amazon, you find the volume in two shops, both in the UK, and both from $221.00 to $225.00. Following prices down the right side, they rise until at the bottom it is $411.66. Another title “QE2 Britain’s Greatest Liner,” by Peter, shows us six pages of new and used books growing in price from $23.58 to $682.82.

Each college or University system has its own unique library search system. Harvard Library suggests their cyber source, Hollis. Stanford has Nerd Squirrel as a guide. Harvard also suggests that Wikipedia’s external links are useful. Google Books, World Cat, and OAISTER are listed here also.

Looking up these nautical books, I used the giant search engines ABE, Alibris, Biblio, Amazon, and BookFinder. If I couldn’t find the book anywhere, I resorted to Google. I love a good mystery, and searching down a book is just like reading a book by Louise Penny. The search starts with a gentle question, and it sometimes ends in a tiring run. For me, the hunt is flat out fun offering an exciting finish.