Libraries selling withdrawn books on TradeMe
Purpose – Some public libraries have experimented with selling withdrawn books via online auction sites, but there has been little exchange of information about the benefits of this and whether it is a practice other libraries could follow. This paper aims to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach – Original data are collected through interviews with six practitioners.Findings – All libraries were using TradeMe for opportunistic reasons. They had withdrawn books to sell and hoped that a national market would realise better prices than in‐house sales. Although prices were usually better, not all books sold and the staff costs were often higher than the revenues brought in.Research limitations/implications – The research is limited to six public libraries in New Zealand.Practical implications – Library managers learn from experience that they can generate some revenue by selling withdrawn books through online auction sites, but only if staff costs are kept down. Partnerships with dealers or interest...
What Do I Hear?: eBay's Utility in a Library
Description Title: What Do I Hear...: eBay's Utility in a Library Author(s): Zumalt, Joseph R.; Konieczny, Alison Subject(s): eBay online auctions public libraries academic libraries collection development reference services evaluation Abstract: The online auction site eBay provides library staff and patrons an important tool in many areas. Libraries can use eBay as an additional avenue to buy and sell books, answer reference questions, promote computer literacy and even as a means to encourage library use. Examples of easy-to-use strategies are given, as well as a short list of recent book selections about how to get more out of eBay. Issue Date: 2008 Publisher: Public Library Association, American Library Association Citation Info: Public Libraries Genre: Article Type: Text Language: English URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3496 Publication Status: published or submitted for publication
Business use of the World-Wide Web
This article introduces the issue of business activity on the World-Wide Web and reports on two surveys of business organizations with World-Wide Web pages. The first survey examined the WWW pages and categorized them by industry sector and by the nature of the use of the Web. The second survey used a brief e-mail questionnaire to those companies in the first survey that provided an e-mail contact address. The companies made use of the Web for publicity, advertising, customer support, and online selling. The major problems holding back further development were said to be: development of secure sites and suitable payment systems, faster connection times and wider access. The main future developments were seen to be: more interaction with users, more general content to be added, the addition of more products and services and increased use of multi-media.