🚀 go-pugleaf

From news@u.washington.edu Wed Jul 22 16:52:46 1992
From: tdowling@lib.washington.edu (Thomas Dowling)
Subject: Re: letters.7-20-92


>   I appreciate your Internet libraries newsgroup a great deal.  I was
> wondering, however, if there is an on-line Books In Print anywhere.
> Despite DRA.COM's admirable Library of Congress index, it has neither
> all books currently in print (as categorized by ISBN, that is, being
> various versions of the same book, such as paperback availability) nor
> the current price etc.  Is there any way to obtain this information,
> short of finding an Internet library with some of this information
> stored in it for a particular book?

This has become something of a FAQ, so apologies to those who have seen this 
answer before.

BIP (and CARL Uncover, the IEEE database, etc.) is a commercial database 
whose producer depends on it to make money.  Providing it anywhere for free 
would tend to discourage anyone from paying for it through other channels.  
If you were to find free access to it, you would know that someone had 
already paid for your access; when that person finds out about this, he or 
she will most likely turn that access off.

So, if you really want to search Books in Print via the Internet, my suggestion
is to get an account from Dialog Information Services (1-800-3-DIALOG in the 
U.S.), telnet to dialog.com, and search BIP from there.

On the other hand, if you want a free listing of new books, Stanford's 
bookstore has their holdings in the Stanford catalog.  Telnet to 
forsythetn.stanford.edu,
 use the account "socrates", and issue the command "select bookstore".

>
> Doug Lamb
> Center for Semicustom Integrated Systems
> University of Virginia
> dtl8v@Virginia.EDU

|Thomas Dowling                    |          tdowling@u.washington.edu|
|Engineering Library               |                     (206) 543-0741|
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