We enter 2019 with 8,765,292 full text records in the Rare Book Transaction History Database.  During the past year we’ve added 465,101 new records or 1,274 a day or 53 records every hour of every day of the year.  These auction records, while not entirely seamless are so complete that few items, no matter how rare, lack a substantially complete record.

 

For 2019 we will continue to add fresh records as auctions complete, add two projects now beginning and a third to later in the first half.

 

We have on hand the archives of a California university that we think will add somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 older records. We will also open a new database to test the concept of intense local history databases that rely primarily on ephemera, manuscripts, photography, and maps rather than books.  I’ll be installing my 8,000  item collection of southern Ulster County this year.

 

We also hope to confirm a relationship with the State of New York to make the southern Ulster County Collection a model for the other 61 counties of New York State.

 

The third project will reflect a rethinking about how the field intersects with the present.

 

So we’ll be busy and we hope, if that’s your preference, that you are too.

 

To the roughly 20,000 members of the Rare Book Hub community who provide daily inspiration I speak for all of us when I say thank you.

 

Be busy and be well in 2019.