Anonymous Patron writes “Scotsman.com Reports A 400-YEAR-OLD bible which is one of the rarest of its kind in Scotland has been put up for sale on an internet auction site.
The bible, printed in Edinburgh in 1610, has been listed on auction site eBay with a starting bid of £500 and has already attracted 16 bids.
But experts are predicting that the rare book, known as the Geneva Bible, is worth much more than £500 and that the auction is a bargain for collectors of religious books.
I found several when I searched eBay, Here.”
Which raises the question…
If your library had a database that cost $75,000 that three people a year used, and you could and sell it back — the vendor even allows you to make an electronic copy for free — and use the money to subscribe to another database or buy more journals and books that thousands of patrons would benefit from… do you think you’d have a hard time convincing the library administration to do it?
But special collections curators view such practices, when applied to rare books, as scandalous. Why? We sell duplicate copies at the book sale, but when it comes to collectable rare books, the line seems to be drawn.
Oxford sold a Shakespeare folio for millions a few years back. Any why not? It’s freely online, just as is the Gutenberg Bible and thousands more texts rotting away (or do you have climate control? well how about security to deter theft of these valuable items? oh you have that too? Are you fireproof and floodproof as well? Because off-site data storage is…) in closed stacks when they can far more easily be reached by simultaneous remote users online.
Re:Which raises the question…
Well, I think the issue is control, and that’s not a bad thing when it comes to unique or rare items. When an object is in the control of a large organization, especially one with a charge to maintain cultural materials, it has many people speaking up for it, from the heads of the organization down to the patrons. When the object gets into private hands, despite the best of intentions, control is concentrated in one person’s hands. And when that collector dies, or goes bankrupt, what happens? Things become muddy, untraceable, control is lost. Someone decides to sell it page by page on ebay. I think it is dangerous to think that the digital copy made today is forever going to be the best version that will suffice. Access isn’t the only issue. The issues you raise – climate control, security, fire, floods, etc. are all issues that multiply and become harder to control, enforce, and track when objects move into private hands. It will be a sad sad day when all our rare and unique items are in private hands and an electronic copy is all that is available.
Re:Which raises the question…
Digital preservation has come a long way since the Domesday fiasco. Take a look at LOCKSS for instance. Besides, you can always print a copy of your million-dollar item anyway; in my example, which your comment doesn’t seem to address, a library can make digital and paper copies of a valuable item (so who cares if the orignal goes in to private hands?), but retains the investment at the expense of spending money elsewhere.
I used the word “curator” above because to me it seems a contradiction between the library’s need to do the best job with available resources to provide information to users, versus the desire to preserve museum-type artifacts.
Ask your special collections librarian how much one of their most expensive items could sell for, and then how many times it gets used. Then ask your collection development staff to take a break from quibbling over $20-a-year serial subscription cancellations to consider how many users this type of funding could benefit.