Over the last week or so, Epsom Library has been having a sale, from stands in the entrance area, of some of its older books, mainly arty. It was explained to me, at some length as it happens, that prices were fixed by taking a look at a selection of online sellers such as AbeBooks and then, taking condition into account, aiming well below them. A reasonable rather than bargain price, which was fair enough, but which resulted in prices which struck this potential buyer as capricious; the prices did not bear any consistent relation to what the books were worth to me. I suppose the combined effects of caprice in my tastes and the vagaries of the pricing arrangements of the second hand book trade - vagaries which seem to result in the Oxfam shop in Kingston carrying ancient multi-volume works at prices which I cannot see clearing the market. What passer-by these days is going to stump up £30 for the collected letters of Gladstone, even the famous one? Whoever is there out there who still reads that kind of stuff?
All that said, I was still able to pick up a few odds and ends of interest.
I did not pick up the collected works of Antony Trollope, in a nicely got-up edition - brown hard backs, neither Everyman's Library nor Oxford World's Classics - for which the Library was hoping for £2.50 a volume, for which there still seemed to have been no takers a week into the sale. Years ago I might have been tempted, but now I have them on the Kindle and grudge the shelf space. Although capricious to the extent of having picked up a nice copy of the 'Eustace Diamonds' in the Everyman edition for £1 at a recent table top sale in Devon. A book to which I claim family connection (see reference 1), trumping the fact that I had already recycled an Oxford edition, one of those handy little blue books, of same, some years previously.
But I did press on into the library to see how their free access to research service worked and where a helpful assistant took some trouble to track down a service of which she had not previously heard. So not much demand for it. I notice in passing that on two recent visits there did not seem to be much demand for their bank of computers either - the bank which used to be very busy, mainly with young people, young people presumably in digs which either did not provide access to the Internet or a place from which one could work. Perhaps digs are getting better, but in any event I hope libraries stick with the service, which despite having an excellent service from BT Broadband at home, I still find occasion to use, maybe once a month or so.
The access to research service turned out to be free to me and to be powered by the Publishers Licensing Service (see reference 2). I have not looked very carefully at who is paying, but I did find words about initiatives to make publicly funded research freely available to the public. All down to some government committee called the Finch Group (see reference 3).
The result of which was that while the particular paper I was looking for was still lurking behind its pay-wall, I was able to turn up various companion pieces using a handy global search facility. This could do things like 'give me everything you have got on hemoglobin flavoured baryons published since 2010'. I was even allowed to download pdf versions of papers onto the data stick which I had thought to take along with me. Very handy - with the only restriction being that I had to actually be in a library to do it. It was not enough to log into the Surrey Library online service from home.
Progress, progress which is to be applauded.
PS: I have yet to fail google on finding research. If you put in a sensible reference it will turn the thing up, quite often both a version which is behind a pay-wall and a version which is not. Generally speaking, I do not have qualms about using the ones which are not, the exceptions being the ones from sites which have a rather contraband flavour about them. Otherwise, I am content to leave the great and the good to sort all this out.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/snow-on-trollope.html.
Reference 2: http://www.pls.org.uk/.
Reference 3: http://www.researchinfonet.org/. Not the insurance broker also called finch.
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