Barbara Sterling (tel: 6-3317) is in charge of searching for and ordering out-of-print titles. Please contact her directly to place orders. Email requests are preferred.

Out of Print Procedures overview:

Requests for out-of-print titles come from the library's bibliographers or from reserve or from cancelled firm orders. Barbara uses web databases to locate titles AddAll.Com is the primary one used as it includes many booksellers and vendors. Most of the books are ordered through Alibris or ABE. Besides books, videos, scores and other formats can be searched for but the success rate is not very high.

Titles come in directly from the bibliographer or the office liaison; from cancelled notices from our vendors; and from regular review files of cancelled records in Millennium. Midwest (US), Blackwell (England) and Harrassowitz (Germany) will search for out of print titles and send us quotes. Every few months Barbara runs a file of all order records cancelled by our vendors and sends this list to Alibris so they can automatically search against their database.  Because of time constraints she is unable to search for all of these one by one which is why the Alibris system is used and why the bibliographer may find titles on vendor or publisher databases that she has been unable to find.

First time orders coming directly from the bibliographers, without going through a regular channels first, constitute about half of the orders . The remaining half are firm orders that were cancelled by our vendors. Unless indicated at time of order Barbara automatically searches for titles cancelled by our vendors as out of print.  We have a 60-70% success rate overall.

A couple of times a year Barbara sends a list to each bibliographer of their open OP titles to ask them if they still want to keep on searching for the titles. She gives them a month to return the lists and then continues to search for any still wanted. Any unreturned lists are no longer searched.

The condition is as important then the price. We want to build up the collection with books in a good condition, not ones that will have to replaced or repaired. Our ultimate goal is to obtain a "tight, fine" cloth copy in a dust jacket. Dust jackets indicate that the book has been well protected and should be in better condition. Paperbacks have a shorter life span and are not always the better choice. They may be fine for a class-dup copy or for a one time course reserve. If there are many quotes in the same price range then condition of the book and realiability of the dealer is used to determine purchase. Prices for the same book will be diverse. We try not to accept Ex-library editions, as they will be more marked up. Reputable dealers will declare this on their quotes. We also do not usually accept UMI reprint editions as they are incomplete and expensive photocopies or Book of the Month Club editions.

OP orders are suppressed from the public catalog until a title is actually on the way or has been received so the public won't request a title we have been unable to find.

We try to order New, Fine, Very Good copies. Sometimes Good if necessary (only copy available). If the book is for a cldup copy then some condition problems are more acceptable.

Fine/Like New (F) - No defects, little usage. May show remainder marks. Older books may show minor flaws.

Very Good (VG) - Shows some signs of wear and is no longer fresh. Attractive.

Good (G) - The average used book with all pages present. Books with loose bindings, highlighting, cocked spine, torn dust jackets, can fall into this category.

Fair (FR) - Obviously well-worn and handled but no text pages are missing, however, it may be without endpapers or a title page. There might be markings, but they do not interfere with readability.

Poor (P) - All text is legible but may be soiled and have binding defects. Reading copies and binding copies fall into this category.