Fw: H-ASIA: Extremely expensive books: some thoughts on building a library

----- Original Message -----
From: "Frank F Conlon" <conlon@U.WASHINGTON.EDU>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, November 08, 2011 1:36 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Extremely expensive books: some thoughts on building a
library

> H-ASIA
> November 7, 2011
>
> Thoughts on building a library: extremely expensive books
> **********************************************************************
> From: Naomi Standen <n.standen@bham.ac.uk>
>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> Retrofitting a library with Chinese history materials can
> apparently include some extraordinarily expensive items,
> including the following (with annotations from my library
> acquisitions staff):
>
> Ebrey, P.- Family and Property in Sung China, ISBN 0691054266.
> This title is available via amazon and abebooks but is
> very expensive. Cheapest copy is approx. £138.68 (via abe)
>
> Hansen, Valerie.- Changing Gods in medieval china, 1127-1276,
> ISBN 0691055599. This title is available via amazon and
> abebooks but is very expensive. Cheapest copy is
> approx. £179.31 (via abe)
>
> Hymes, Robert.- Statesman and Gentlemen: the elite of Fu-chou,
> Chiang-hsi in Northern and Southern Song, ISBN 0521306310
> This title is available via amazon and abebooks but is very
> expensive. Cheapest copy is approx. £200.86 (via abe)
>
> Watson, Rubie & Ebrey, Patricia.- Confucianism and Family
> Rituals in Imperial China, ISBN 0691031509
> This title is available via amazon and abebooks but is
> very expensive. Cheapest copy is approx. £149.52 (via abe)
>
> The library has clearly looked in the obvious places, but I
> presume that the reason these books are so expensive is
> because they're out of print. Barring the unlikelihood that
> the publishers in question will consider another print run,
> is there something we're all missing here re. a source for
> more reasonably priced copies of these books?
>
> Sometimes items are unavoidably horribly expensive, but with
> these books it just doesn't seem quite right! Worse still,
> the authors won't actually benefit from these inflated prices.
>
> With thanks,
> Naomi Standen
>
>
> --
> Naomi Standen
> Professor of Medieval History
> University of Birmingham
> n.standen@bham.ac.uk<mailto:n.standen@bham.ac.uk>
>
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