The Americana Exchange has a new name, rarebookhub.com. The new name better reflects the changed content and emphasis of the site over the past 10 years. We set out to focus on Americana in 2002 but from the outset Americana has been, for most visitors and members, simply a portion of what they buy, sell or collect. They were also involved with many other kinds of material and we changed our focus to reflect this. The only thing we didn’t change was the name.
In 2004 we began to broaden the material we cover and have since that time, built the AED [that we now call Rare Book Transaction History] into the finest and most extensive collection of past auctions, important dealer catalogues, and bibliographies for the collectible works on paper field ever attempted.
Indicative of this broader approach is our coverage of upcoming auctions and their auction lots. This past year we covered 413,503 lots, up from 358,662 in 2013, a 15% increase. Fifty-five percent of these lots were posted outside the United States and 48% of our membership lives there. Such material for years has ranged far beyond Americana to include fiction as well as non-fiction, and all forms of printed material in many, actually most, of the languages spoken across the world. Over the past decade the world has become a smaller, more connected place, and the growth of our databases simply reflected this emerging reality. The rare book field has become a single market.
Beneath the hood the site is unchanged. The name rarebookhub.com simply better reflects our reality, that we treat the world as a borderless continuum in which material from and about Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong and Switzerland all equally await their turn to come up instantly in database searches.
The location of services on the site remains the same although some names have changed. AE Monthly has become Rare Book Monthly and, as mentioned earlier, the AED become Rare Book Transaction History.
If and as you have questions always ask. We are grateful for your membership and look forward to discovering the future together.
On behalf of the Rare Book Hub and AE
Bruce McKinney
Managing Partner
