To buy or not to buy....

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Quick question about "out of print" books:  Do you buy them for your collections?  If you do not, why not?  If you do, do you only buy one copy?  What's the lowest condition you're willing to get?  What's the most you're willing to pay?  Do you only buy under certain conditions?  (part of a series, classic, local interest, etc?)  And, what do you do if it suddenly gets 60 holds on the single copy?

Thanks!

Comments

Kristen N said…
We often buy out of print copies of anything by local (the entire state) authors or on a local topic. Condition-wise, we have ended up with some bad ones. It's basically anything better than the copy we're trying to replace. And we regularly send things to the bindery.

The only other thing we'll buy used is decent copies of really popular large print titles that have fallen apart. Large print is huge. I get a daily email from Powells for just their 'new' large print offerings.

The rest, the patron has to use ILL. But we never charge for ILL.
November 8, 2013 at 9:00 AM
Pseudo Super mum said…
We too often buy out of print copies - teachers put classic texts on reading lists, and music text print-runs are often quite short so it's buy 2ndhand, or don't buy at all. (Follow us @ whittakerlive.blogspot.com)
November 8, 2013 at 1:31 PM
Helen Saunders said…
Don't know where to start with this! I work in an academic library, looking after Welsh, a field in which a high proportion of material on reading lists and in high demand is out of print (often only ever published in short runs in the first place). I wish more of this stuff was available as print-on-demand, but it isn't. Trying to locate out of print books which don't cost silly amounts is a source of much frustration, all the time! see my own blog for occasional rants on the subject

November 8, 2013 at 1:46 PM
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