[Genealib] Seeking distributor/vendor recommendation

[Barbara Hill]

Sorry for the tardy reply, but here goes.

Is there any chance your library can trust you with an institutional 
credit card?  The reason I ask is that I use Amazon.com and the 
online version of Barnes & Noble to obtain quite a few genealogy and 
local history books for our library.  I only order what is in stock, 
but you'd be amazed to discover the wide variety of titles they both 
carry, even from very small presses, and sometimes there is even a 
nice little discount.  Also, shipping from Amazon is free if your 
order total exceeds some small amount - less than $30 if I recall.

A couple of examples of what I've been able to get:  Amazon.com had 
one of the two volumes of Hawaiian Genealogies in stock even though 
it is out of stock indefinitely with the publisher/distributor 
(University of Hawaii Press).  (Barnes & Noble had it in stock 
too.)  And I was able to get a volume of vital records indexed from 
El Paso newspapers which is now out of print, and later finished the 
set with an order directly to the El Paso Genealogical 
Society.  Amazon sometimes even has Canadian titles in stock - how 
convenient!  What I would not expect to find available from either 
online store is specific family genealogies, but our budget is so 
tiny that we seldom purchase those anyway, relying on donated copies instead.

Next time you have a batch of titles ready to order, check them on 
Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble just for fun.  You might be impressed.

Barbara Hill
Library Committee
California Genealogical Society

P.S.  I never use BIP, haven't in years, and don't miss it one bit.


At 12:04 PM 1/25/2008, you wrote:
>Hi, gang,
>
>For a small special library with a local history collection and
>a tiny budget, can any of you suggest a distributor or vendor
>who is likely to carry small press, genealogy, and local history
>titles from multiple publishers?  One stop shopping, so to
>speak?
>
>Otherwise we make out laborious purchase orders for each title,
>unless we're lucky enough to need more than one title from the
>same publisher.  Then we get shipping quotes.  I had to go back
>for forth for days with one major publisher because they don't
>offer a shipping rate schedule on their website and their
>customer service representative couldn't even find the title I
>wished to order in their catalogs, even though I found it in
>BIP.  Then we fax in the order and maybe their fax machine works
>and maybe it does not...you get the idea.
>
>Shopping for new books should be more pleasant than this!
>
>
>*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:**:-.,_,.-*
>Cynthia Van Ness, MLS, bettybarcode AT yahoo DOT com
>http://www.BuffaloResearch.com
>
>"Everyone claims to want a city, but no one here wants city 
>living.  City living by its definition is crowded.  It is tolerant 
>of other people.  It is dependent on a sophisticated population that 
>makes a hundred compromises daily so that they can benefit from the 
>collective energy that a city generates."     --Robert N. Davis, Jr. 
>(1955-2007)
>_______________________________________________

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