Interesting new search site (and more)
So welcome to the world, viaLibri. It is in the manner of BookFinder and AddAll, a meta-search tool (allowing you to search multiple aggregators at once). It is still evolving, but it appears extremely well designed and to have some rather exceptional features. You can choose where you want to search (or, more importantly, where you do not wish to search), the interface is very clean and the "Rare Book - Bargain" option is, if nothing else, funny.
Personally, I loved their 552 page. Basically, this is a link field of each of the 552 years of publishing history populated with recently cached matches. It may not be especially useful...but is it was strangely additive. I also love that you can post catalogues to the site. There is also a nice "Library Search" tool that I have not seen elsewhere
You do not appear to be able to "sort" on the price field, but I wager that will be forthcoming (and/or I missed something). There is also no way to preclude paperbacks (or vice versa)...again, a favorite of mine. Most interestingly/inexplicable is that the search results are slightly strangely organized (e.g. "X found at xxxxx" appears reasonably arbitrary)...but again, this may be my brain (as I have not had the time to really dig into the site).
That said, the aesthetic and the UI is absolutely great. There are some well entrenched players in the market and I do not see an income model...but I hope they succeed.
Thanks to Hugh for this.
posted by LuxMentis @ 10:14 AM
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3 Comments:
ijk and Hugh: thanks to both of you for the early review of viaLibri, I will test it out.
With AddAll compared to results on abebooks, even after dozens of searches on each, one type of difference keeps switching around: the number of titles found. Sometimes more on abe, often more on AddAll. The presumption should be AddAll gives more. More sites are searched. But there it is: abe coming up with a greater number and variety of choices for the same title compared to AddAll (and nothing to do with the same vendor -- same book phenomena.
If viaLibri is more dependibly casting a wide and vendor-title-specific net than the two I use most, then I am very interested.
As a rule, garbage in, garbage out. If sellers do not add the ISBN numbers or search engines are not picking out an author's surname name and any keyword in a title, users will be returned results that are less than precisely what is on the market for any one title.
Everyone knows it; no one does a thing about it. What booksellers and buyers all would like is an archiving feature with comparisons to find out which books are being sold or are (for some reason) moving in price over time. The best of all worlds will be transparency for the sum of price plus handling and shipping if I buy for delivery from point X to my Y location. No site is able to impose such truth in selling for a large number of meta-sites being searched (correct me if I am wrong).
I like the ability to add code for AddAll to my blog: http://cheap-priceless-editions.blogspot.com and have the search executed rapidly from the blog on AddAll. I will hunt for that utility on viaLibri
Blogaulaire,
I’m sensing you might be a fellow-fanatic and am eager to hear the results when you put viaLibri to the tests you mention above. My guess is that you will be pleasantly surprised. We have cooked up our own tests and described them on the site (near the bottom of the “More” tab under the heading “Feature Comparison”). We are more focused on the rare books than the cheap ones, but you can always go the other way by selecting “Bargains” instead of “Rare Books” on the search form.
We don’t yet have a portable search utility, but it would be easy enough to build one if you really wanted it.
Jim H.
vialibran suggests 'My guess is that you will be pleasantly surprised.'
Yes, I am pleased with my initial trial of viaLibri.
Your focus on rare and antique titles should not be misconstrued by users looking for more mass market material to mean that viaLibri is not for these searches as well.
My search found two of what I am looking for; one signed, the other missing vol 2. I know sellers whose prices are way above or way below what I think the market price would/could/should be. With non-standard descriptions (which it was for the signed title), the rationale for higher prices does not declare itself clearly. Since I scan instead of closely read my initial search results, I was grateful that your results page uses a usable link to edit the search results.
If a user community evolves around viaLibri, I would link to see annotations and links to sources (including to Wikipedia) added to some of the Classic Titles currently or recently on the market. (Specialists and enthusiasts might be willing to take this on as volunteers as they do at Wikipedia.)
I believe that many items offering at above $100 have not been researched by the seller. So anyone who has information to share about such a title should be welcome by most sellers when they annotate and comment upon a listing. Just a thought.
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