Libraries selling withdrawn books on TradeMe
Purpose – Some public libraries have experimented with selling withdrawn books via online auction sites, but there has been little exchange of information about the benefits of this and whether it is a practice other libraries could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 They had withdrawn books to sell and hoped that a national market would realise better prices than in‐house sales.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Zealand.Practical implications – Library managers learn from experience that they can generate some revenue by selling withdrawn books through online auction sites, but only if staff costs are kept down.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...
Publishing, bookselling and the World Wide Web
Reports research into the ways the publishing and bookselling industries are using the World Wide Web, based on samples drawn from the bookselling and publishing categories in the Yahoo! search engine directory and a survey of the sites. Reports results of a questionnaire survey sent to the identified companies in the hope that it would be possible to establish how these industries were using the Web and, by comparing the data with the results from the reexamination of the earlier sites, to be able to see how similar, or dissimilar, the book trades’ use of the Web is to other industrial sectors. The study formed part of a continuing investigation into the business use of the World Wide Web. It is concluded that publishers and booksellers are clearly committed to online selling and, since over a third of publishers are selling online, calls into question claims that they are unwilling to alienate bookstores by selling direct to customers. The majority of booksellers are actively engaging in online selling. Only 15 per cent of Web sites have electronic mail ordering and e-mail ordering appears to be increasingly replaced by online forms.
Business Use of The World Wide Web: a report on further investigations
As a continuation of previous study this paper reports on a series of studies into business use of the World Wide Web and, more generally the Internet. The use of the World Wide Web as a business tool has increased rapidly for the past three years, and the benefits of the World Wide Web to business and customers are discussed, together with the barriers that hold back future development of electronic commerce. As with the previous study, we report on a desk survey of 300 randomly selected business web sites and on the results of an electronic mail questionnaire sent to the sample companies.