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Approximately five years ago, when he retired, Mr Claude Gill delivered a paper to a conference of librarians and it was very clear that he was pessimistic regarding the standards of distribution from publishers to booksellers. After the traumas of early computerization and decentralization away from London and five years later, I think that there are now grounds for believing that the situation has improved for the better. It is not ideal. Many publishers are still too slow and too many mistakes are still being made. The Director of the Booksellers Association recently said that: ‘In an outside world of increasing congestion and high labour costs it may be regarded as an outstanding achievement for a service nowadays to be no worse off!’

It is now forty years since there appeared H. R. Plomer's first volume Dictionary of the booksellers and printers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667. This has been followed by additional Bibliographical Society publications covering similarly the years up to 1775. From the short sketches given in this series, indicating changes of imprint and type of work undertaken, scholars working with English books issued before the closing years of the eighteenth century have had great assistance in dating the undated and in determining the colour and calibre of any work before it is consulted.

This paper argues that the revolution in intellectual property rights is not forward-looking, but backward looking, and that it is not consonant with the purposes of the patent and copyright clause. It is animated by the theory of common law copyright, which deliberately reconceptualizes social relations in order to recast them as property, and which has been with us for centuries. This paper investigates the “mythology of common law copyright,” showing how this reconceptualization has worked both historically and in the present day to push the law in a direction that is ostensibly author-centered, but is actually focused on the rights of intermediaries.

This paper describes a model for integrating publicly available private information concerning textual heritage on the websites of South Korean antiquarian booksellers into the information management systems of the National Library of South Korea (NLK).

A method for formalizing the coproduction of heritage knowledge is presented, using the NLK and textual heritage as a case study.

An investigation of the systems and services of the NLK, interviews with South Korean antiquarian booksellers and the researchers' ability to design a system (including an application profile) that will facilitate the integration of data curated by antiquarian booksellers into the systems of the NLK suggest that it is possible to formalize the coproduction of heritage knowledge.

Although this case study is limited to describing the information management procedures of a small number of online South Korean antiquarian booksellers and a single national library, its findings have broad implications. Through discussion of a specific case, the paper identifies a large class of resources that, if acquired, circulated and conserved by public libraries, is likely to enhance the public good provided by public libraries. It also provides an example of how public libraries can better meet their obligations as service and memory institutions by building systems that enable the coproduction of heritage resources by documenting and conserving records related to heritage transactions.

The paper demonstrates that it is possible to create a formal system for coproducing heritage information.

The ability of public libraries to coproduce heritage information is likely to increase the public good provided by public libraries and to make heritage resources more accessible.

This paper presents a novel model enabling the curation of publicly available private information about antiquarian texts by a national library to aid cultural understanding and the preservation of documents describing historical texts.

This paper aims to focus on resistance strategies in distribution channels. The concept of resistance has received much attention in organization theory, but it has been rather neglected in corporate strategy. Only a few works dedicated to distribution channels explicitly use the notion of resistance strategy. These works provide a view of resistance as an inter-organizational phenomenon between companies (i.e. buyers and suppliers) but limit resistance strategies to merely confrontation strategies between channel members. This paper studies resistance strategies in a more open perspective considering that resistance can coexist with collaborative relationships, as part of a specific societal reality.

To capture the deep variety of resistance strategies, from the most active to the most passive, a qualitative research was carried out in France in the context of the book trade, based on 15 semi-structured interviews. The discourse analysis provides insights into the social reality of an organization and also the reality of changes in inter-organizational relationships. The interviews were conducted with 15 different companies representing a significant share of the French market.

The paper shows that channel members successfully develop resistance strategies of logistical nature, based on the efficient monitoring of flows, both inside the company (logistics rationalization) and within the supply chain (control of interfaces). Channel members who implement a logistics rationalization and a control of interfaces succeed not only in containing the power of their powerful partners but also in benefitting from new sources of profitability and improvement of customer service.

The French book trade is an illustration of the role played by logistical aspects in the power exercised by a supplier and resistance strategies that buyers develop in response as part of buyer-supplier relationships. Indeed, it is because they have a strong logistical expertise that dominant actors are capable, step by step, to place dominated actors in a situation of strong dependency, by using for that purpose their logistical means. In turn, dominated actors seek to develop logistical responses to rebalance the buyer-supplier relationships in their favor.

WE are always averse to indulging in any controversy that involves the booksellers. At the Brighton Conference a well‐known representative of the Booksellers' Association delivered an address in which he asked for the co‐operation of booksellers and librarians. Our present President, Mr. Jast, assured him on behalf of the meeting that it will be forthcoming whenever possible. In America the Association of Booksellers works in the closest harmony with the libraries, using their publications, and booksellers and libraries mutually advertise and otherwise assist each other. It is rather painful to read in The Publishers' Circular, which may or may not represent British booksellers as a whole, that the Editor regards libraries as an expensive method of disseminating fiction which ought to be bought by readers; that libraries interfere with and compete with booksellers in a disastrous manner, and more to the same effect.

A FEW YEARS AGO that small but many‐paged volume of facts called Whitaker's Almanack, published annually by J. Whitaker & Sons, celebrated its centenary. In 1974 the firm celebrated the longevity of another of its publications, British Books in Print, first published in 1874 as the Reference Catalogue of Current Literature. While many people know of the Almanack, it is mostly publishers, booksellers, and librarians who are aware of the other publications this firm has produced in the field of book‐trade bibliography in the last 116 years, publications of sufficient scope and quality to delay until quite recently the provision of a British national bibliography.

This is a brief study of the life and work of the celebrated antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819‐1899). Born in Germany and having served his apprenticeship as a bookseller there, he came to London in 1842 with a letter of introduction to John Murray. After a short period in Paris he finally settled in London in 1845, setting up his own business there in 1845. This flourished and in his Victorian heyday Quaritch had an international fame, priding himself on being bookseller to many “eminent Victorians”. In 1859 he was also first to venture to publish Edward Fitzgerald’s somewhat daring “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. Quaritch had a firm and lasting influence on books and literature of his time. Apart from his enormous influence on private libraries he helped decisively to build up the collections of the British Museum and of the H.C. Folger Library in the USA. He illustrates how the book trade in Victorian England made its own forceful contributions to the advancement of literature, learning and libraries of all sorts.

Holt Jackson have recognised the importance of EDI at an early stage. This article presents the standards issues from the book trade's point of view and describes Holt Jackson's use of the First Edition system. Some omissions in the TRADACOMS format are highlighted. The debate over who should be responsible for transmission charges is covered in the review of costs involved.

‘The library founded by the first Ptolemies was in the most splendid district in the city … where a number of scholars were maintained at public expense in order to devote themselves entirely to the pursuit of knowledge.’ The University of Alexandria acquired most of its books by the simple process of appropriating all that came into the city; these Ptolemy caused to be copied and a fair copy returned to the owner. Many university librarians must envy the Alexandrians not only the ‘most splendid district in the city’, but also this method of acquiring books. Even at that time there were booksellers in Athens, and the need for a middle man was being recognized, a need that I am sure no university librarian would dispute today.