[Publib] Advance[d] Reading Copies

[Knieriem, Lesley]

I receive dozens of fiction ARCs every year, and never in my memory have
they been "copies of the first edition."  They are unedited, rife with
typos, missing materials, and poorly bound.  Adding them to the
collection would be deceiving your patrons and stealing from the author
and publisher of the works.  It is the equivalent of paying for a ticket
to see a movie at your local theatre, and instead of being shown the
finished product, only being allowed to see the uncut, unedited
compiliation of daily rushes.  Wouldn't you feel cheated?  And if the
book is worthy of being added to your collection, don't the author and
publisher deserve fair recompense?

 

(And no book added to the collection is really "free" - generally
speaking, the cost of processing, handling, cataloging, and shelving
even a donated item is equivalent to the discounted purchase price of a
properly acquired new book.  We owe it to our taxpayers to make sure
this money is spent on the best possible materials.)

 

As for what I do with all those ARCs - why, I use them for the intended
purpose.  After I finish marking them up for review, I pass them along
to others - patrons and librarians - for the purpose of review and
creating advance buzz.  If no one is interested (a useful bit of data in
itself) I throw them away.

 

Lesley Knieriem

Rogers Public Library

Rogers AR

 

________________________________

From: Judith Turner [mailto:turnermalibmba at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 9:30 PM
To: publib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Publib] Advance[d] Reading Copies

 



My question is why don't you add advance reading copies (aka review
copies) to the library collection, assuming the book is one you would
acquire anyway?  Nowadays, they are copies of the first edition that are
released early for publicity purposes so it's not a cataloging problem,
except possibly in science-fiction where collectors consider them as the
real first editions.  



 

 



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