Rare Book Monthly
Articles - November - 2008 Issue
Wiki Bibliographies: The Way to the Future
Wallkill Valley Railroad Directory
place to test the idea of building authoritative bibliographies and around them paths to historical records, copies for sale, and even the full texts themselves. If I am correct, the problem these last 15 years has not been that people have lost interest. Rather it is that they have lost sight. In time I believe these constantly updating, always available bibliographies will define and establish, on firm footing, the aggregation, study, collecting and selling of such material to a world that once its understands such efforts are authoritative will embrace the methodology and salute the effort.
So it is interesting that a place whose name has disappeared may become a battleground to help determine the future of book, manuscript, map and ephemera sales on the net. You have to wonder if Henry Hudson had any premonition when he sailed by on the Half Moon in 1609. Kingston, that long ago digested Rondout, was once, if briefly, the capital of the state, home to an IBM pregnant with fresh ideas for converting electric typewriters into deluxe office equipment that later became a phalanx of systems software that brought the world into the computer age. In a world where revolutions are fought on the same ground for different reasons generations and even centuries apart, Kingston and now mostly invisible Rondout look to be ground zero for a test of how the world of books thinks and reacts about its future.
If you would like to propose a wiki bibliography to develop and manage as a core holding for your business, collection, institution or society, click here to open a conversation with us. For many in the field today this will be an important step into the future.
Click here for the Wiki Bibliography Home Page.
