Special Announcements by Craig Stark #139,30 November 2009

Something challenging for you today. Bookseller Joseph Maraglino - some of you may know him as fine.books or "Joe" on the eBay bookseller's forum - has granted us permission to publish his guide to basic cataloguing. Though this has been in place in a slightly different form for some time on the above forum, I felt that it would be useful to expose it to a broader audience because, let's face it, few booksellers bother to catalog their books at all. Of course, one can argue that not all books need cataloguing, but I invite you to suspend this argument for the time being, read this guide closely, several times if necessary, and ponder its implications for your future in bookselling - especially in light of what's going on in the current marketplace.

Also today, I'd like to alert iPhone users to an application that I've found especially useful when scouting - MultiFull Browser. Essentially, this is an Internet browser (used in place of Safari) that allows you to open and view one, two or four pages simultaneously. Each one of the available windows can be assigned a home page. Example: When I launch my browser, four different windows come up, and of which can be quickly expanded to fill your screen or reduced back to a multi-view - Terapeak (signed in), Abebooks Advanced Search, craigslist garage sales and craigslist garage sales with a "books" keyword search. This is a huge time saver; it beats the heck out of forever changing pages on Safari - and, by the way, this browser is noticeably faster than Safari. Another great feature: You have the option of hiding the top and bottom toolbars, which presents a full webpage view (impossible to do on Safari). $.99 in your App Store!

Finally, Michael Bussacco, Heritage Press collector and author of numerous HP guides, is selling his collection, perhaps the largest of its kind anywhere. If interested, contact him.