Determining the Value of an Old Book

[mage_apprentice]

Recently I picked up an old book that the college library I go to was just giving away for free (obviously trying to get rid of books they no longer have a demand for). Lucky for me, I came across a book I think might have some value to it. The problem is, I don't have a lot of information about how to determine monetary value of a book nor does

Comments

[influencethis]

You might want to ask library_mofo, whatwasthatone, or whatwasthatbook. Librarians and bookfinders will have a better idea of how to track down older books.

I suggest using OCLC and WorldCat to look it up. Google either or both and put in the title in the search.

[mage_apprentice]

WorldCat says 1920 and OCLC only has ME documents. I'll check the LJ communities and see what they say.

[influencethis]

Now let me get my library/book knowledge on for you:

Check here for why you can't find an ISBN number. You also won't finder a printer's key in many books before the 50s, especially academic ones. My guess is the prohibitively expensive way that printer's keys were made would cause academic publications to shy away from them.

Libraries are masters of book information. They know the value of books that they own, and they are aware if they have a rare book on their hands. Weeding (getting rid of books) is done with huge amounts of fact-checking and ensuring that valuable and rare items stay in the collection. Even though your book may be a first printing, just the fact that you got it from an academic library for free tells me it's not worth much.

[mage_apprentice]

That would explain a few things, but it still seems rather . . . strange that a book like the one I came across (which is still in really good condition along with all the information provided about it) and yet the staff knew almost nothing about the book itself. I asked them personally about this and they had little to no knowledge about this. Maybe I just didn't ask the right person . . .

And I unmodded your comment.

[influencethis]

Depends on which member of staff you ask.

People working the checkout counter don't have to be trained in anything relating to libraries. I worked checkout at a library when I was 19 and had no knowledge of anything higher than "this is how you know you've checked a book in". People at the reference desk are generally librarians or people in library school. The person who would know the most about a specific item in a library collection is likely the circulation librarian or the technical services staff.

[mage_apprentice]

Next time I go in, I'll be sure to ask for the circulation librarian. I don't really know who is who among the staff members, so I might have ended up talking to the checkout.

Even if it isn't very valuable, I can still show it off to a few history professors.

[mage_apprentice]

I asked for the circulation librarian and got the head librarian and asked about why this book was weeded. As it turns out, due to the fact that this library is attached to a very small community college, it doesn't have the resources necessary to hold old books like a larger college library would (especially ones that are research oriented). The person in charge of weeding out books basically asks two questions after taking a look at book conditions: 1) Is this book outdated and can be replaced by an affordable updated book, and 2) If this book is not the kind that gets "updated" then does the book have a newer edition that will last longer than the old edition we have.

The near-100-year-old book I have was weeded out simply because it was getting old and could be replaced by a stronger copy.