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RARA-AVIS: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BF_'outrageous_demands....held_hostage'?= 

mr greene,

you, apparently, feel some booksellers are asking too much for a book you
(institutionally) want and, by implication, there should be an
'institutonal' price.  rather stridently, you said:

: If it were only that simple.  Public institutions like a university
: research library must answer to the demands of faculty, students, and
: the general public, all of whom demand (rightly) that we collect
: material necessary for their studies.  Rare books and special
: collections departments are held hostage by dealers who justify their
: outrageous prices with just such "arguements" as James'.  A private
: collector can "just say no" to high prices; a library doesn't always
: have that luxury.

i think you're position is not only wrong, but exceedingly hypocritical and
frightfully short-sighted in the bargin.  may i be specific?

you are wrong:
- you may avail yourself of inter-library loan programmes for materials
needs.
- you can negotiate a 'cost, plus' contract and issue a blanket purchase
order in favour of whomever you wish.
- you can tell the requesting party to pay for it from departmental
budgets, research grants, etc. if this acquisition does not benefit the
university community as a whole.
- you can use lesser editions, fascimile reprints, seek permission to copy
from the copyright owner.
- etc.  you have several very good alternatives for acquiring many, if not
most books you need or want - presuming, of course, you do not *want* first
editions for which the marketplace has set a value, correctly or
incorrectly.

if you *want* 'firsts' welcome to the realities of the world.

you are hypocritical:
- what you want on the one hand you would deny on the other, among them:
you get special rates and preferential treatment for goods and services
denied individual collectors or dealers.
- for something *important,* you have a unlimited chequebook filled with
other  people's money.  it is only for what *you* (personally, in this
case) judge to be priced excessively.  once, at an auction, i sat between
the kimble museum and the met.  i quietly got my hat and left - but i
didn't whine - i may have begged them to let me have a crumb or two - but i
didn't whine. 
- you are judging the value of your want to be greater than another's and
saying you should be able to have what you want at a subsidied price
because of your prior want.
- likewise, it is presumptious and hypocritical to assign entirely
arbitrary higher 'values' to a book or an author and deny it to another. 
it is hard to quantify those things most of us hold dear - love, honour,
respect, .....  compared to them, value is, actually, pretty easy - it
comes in round, whole numbers. 
- you (institutionally) contribute in large part to scarcity - leading to
short-sightedness.  (a nice segue, don't you think?)

you are short-sighted:
- i am, primarily, a collector and my collections will, inevitably,
someday, reach the market. yours never will, thereby adding to scarcity and
raising collector's blood pressure.
- your institution has one, specific title i would like.  may i purchase it
for 10 times what you paid for it?  twenty times?  one hundred times?  one
thousand?
- you, simply, cannot insist your prior wants and insular viewpoint
outweighs the interests of the commercial world.

there are creative ways to procure that can soften your costs.  the best
way is to contract with specialist dealers (who pay other non-specialist
dealers three & four levels deep) to find their high-demand product.  guess
what - profits are taken at each step.  that is the way of the bookseller's
world - they buy from other dealers.  it is quite incestuous, really.

perhaps all five of the 'generalist' dealers who touched * the glass key *
before james mountain sold it to you at such an outrageous price should
send you a thank you note for paying their rent and feeding their children.

best regards,
bob sikes
<bsikes@wcnet.net>
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