I choose to re-discover www.biblio.com for this section. I used this a fair while ago to find some rather obscure trash war novels now well out of print that I remembered reading in my youth.
The web2.0-ness of this site comes into play as an early example of the long-tail theory of retail (this being the idea that because there is no need to display stock, and the ease of searching, web retail enables stores to cheaply house huge catalogues of items which almost nobody wants but that 1 sale in a 1000 makes it worthwhile). Possibly second-hand bookstores were the originator; the web just made such businesses more accessable.
I know it goes against the 2.0 ethic of mash-everything-together, but sometimes I just don't want the purile and inarticulate review of an over-opinionated person I havn't met (and might just be working for the publisher or author anyway) when I'm looking up an author. I just want to see what books are available, quickly, cleanly and without too much hassel. This is what biblio provides; provided you are simply looking for second hand books. Some recent books have reviews, but given the speed of the site and the lack of wiz-bang which usually take so long to load, I can forgive this.
I can see this being helpful if we were looking up what to charge a patron who destroys a book; it may give a reasonable approximation, and generally people have provided descriptions of the condition of the book when it was put up for sale.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
You have patrons who destroy books?
It looks as if you have given the site a good look-over, and you're almost done with web 2.0!
Post a Comment