Rare Book Monthly
Articles - December - 2008 Issue
The Future of Bookselling
These bibliographies are the products of collectors, dealers, auction houses and societies that partner with AE to create and manage these sites and the communities that arise from them.
AE has enormous bibliographic resources which begin with the AED so looking back is always the first way to understand the scale of a subject. For many subjects, the bibliographies created on AE will be the first, in other cases simply an advance on what has been known. To what is created at the outset any passerby can propose additional items for consideration. The bibliographies that already exist are primarily for books. Pamphlets are woefully under-represented and ephemera hardly known. In these Wiki bibliographies we expect the unreported material will eventually change what is generally known about most fields. Hence, in time, such bibliographies will, while creating a unified market by subject, also transform our understanding about it.
Because people are busy such wikis must be easy to follow. Anyone can sign up as a free member of AE and then be able to select any number of Wikis to follow. Whenever a member returns we'll provide an update of changes whether it's additions to the bibliography, items appearing on eBay, at traditional auctions and on listing sites. In a matter of minutes, collectors will understand everything that has occurred since they last looked. And it will empower them to collect.
Given time collectors will develop a perspective on the flow, level of prices and the type[s] of material that come to market and learn to recognize relevance, rarity and value when it presents itself. They will become educated collectors and be confident in what they do.
For the wiki organizer there are substantial benefits. Each Wiki will be a community, each person, who signs up to follow a Wiki, a member. The organizer will have access to the statistics of sign-ups, frequency of sign-ins, and will know how people are using the community. Anyone's appropriate material can be posted for sale and no commissions on the Wiki will be charged although sites that charge commissions and link their listings will charge their regular fees to their clients. No one will be excluded unless complaints are made and proven. This is an open site.
The Wiki organizer may, at their discretion, call for periodic auctions and, in time, organize events where people bound by interest in a specific subject may exchange pleasantries, information or cash. Such events may be organized around auctions.
We envision three possible forms of auction and the decisions whether and how to will be made by the Wiki organizer. They can be sequenced as an eBay sale, perhaps a once year event coordinated with eBay, be organized with a designated traditional auction house or run as a Dutch auction a la University of Michigan. Auctions should help to establish market valuation and to clear accumulating listings. Auctions are voluntary both for the organizer and those listing their material on the Wiki.
