C’mon! You Gotta Fix Me Up! Evaluating Online Bookstores
by Greg Beatty
Academics are continually jonesing for a fix.
They’re addicted to most seductive of
drugs: information. They over-subscribe
to listservs and haunt bookstores with
longing in their eyes. (Or maybe that’s
just me.) Oh, sure, they can always justify their desires. I need it for a class. I’ve got a research
project. My next conference paper…
The Internet offers a whole new array of sources for those
of us with this rare but addiction, and so I’m going to evaluate several Internet-based bookstores. To fairly compare prices,
selection, and how user-friendly the websites are, I’ll search
for the same books each place: specific editions of Thomas
Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (for a class,
honest), Sarban’s obscure science fiction novel The Sound
of His Horn (for a paper, really), and for general higher
education titles.
ABE Books
The ABE Books website (http://
www.abebooks.com/) opens immediately to a visually appealing search page, complete with a
space for ISBNs. A link to an area focusing on
new and used textbook sales is visible at the lower
left; I know where to go in less than a second.
My Kuhn search returns many options, all cheap.
Short URL: http://www.adjunctnation.com/?p=550


