USED BOOKS ON THE 'NET

One of the best deals I ever got on reference books was at annual book sale for our local library. I not only got Gray's Anatomy for $1, I also got Will Durant's The Age of Faith, The Age of Reason, The Renaissance, and the Age of Voltaire for $1 each. In all, I spent about 440 at that one sale, and got some great books. As a history writer, I'm always on the look-out for inexpensive historical texts and reference books. Finding primary resources is a bit more difficult.

In almost any field, you'll find a need for older titles that just can't be filled by Waldenbooks, Borders, or even Amazon.com.

Once you've exhausted the resources of local used book stores and cadged all the good reference titles from the library book sales, you'll have to start being more creative in your searches for reference material.

In a search, using the phrases "used books" and "used book stores" HOTBOT returned more than 3 million hits, but most of the ones I checked had nothing to do with used books. ISafari Mall had one "sight" on their Used & Rare Book Trail, but what a site! Advanced Book Exchange has free search services, allowing you to browse by author, subject and title. I got a list of more than 360 titles on medieval and renaissance history. I found very few primary resources, but some very good reference books and treatises on everything from architecture to women. Several listings were reprints and collections from medieval writers. I also found guides to the medieval and renaissance collections in several libraries, though not the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, which is one of my major sources. The site seemed to list a large number of bookstores, which makes it a good place for one-stop shopping. I think I'd like it better if it also provided links to other used book search services.

Alta Vista returned fewer hits, but they were more relevant. Bookworms New and Used Books has a lot of fiction titles, but since it's isn't searchable, you'll have to read through long lists, alphabetized by author. Admiralty Marine offers books on all things nautical. It's quite an impressive collection if that's your pet topic. Broder's Rare and Used Books also had a good selection. Their specialty seems to be Judaica, but they had a nice list of other topics, which were further subdivided. Like some of the others, it still listed books in author-alphabetical order, with no means of searching the lists. Though I'm no expert on pricing, their rates seemed reasonable.

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