| Abstract [eng] |
Antiquarian and used books themselves and their trade are significant phenomenons of book culture. Antiquarian books are often the objects of interest for many historical bibliographists and book collectors. These books are often significant part of cultural heritage. Antiquarian books are opposed to used books, which are in comparison quite new books that has been read. Used books usually doesn’t have any significant cultural or historical value. Used books could be regarded as promoting reading culture because they are more affordable than new books. The development of the Internet during the past 10-15 years provided opportunity for the Internet book trade to emerge. The Internet book trade has some significant advantages over traditional book trade. One of the advantages is that one can sell any type of books on the Internet, even books of rather low demand. This feature is very important for antiquarian and used book trade. Antiquarian and used book trade on the Internet is very new and yet not analysed phenomenon in Lithuania. So it is important to research this subject and to define its basic features and problems. The importance is even greater having in mind the value of antiquarian books as some part of cultural heritage and the value used books as promoter of reading culture. The object of the master’s work is antiquarian and used book trade on the Internet. The aim was to evaluate antiquarian and used book trade in Lithuania after analysing features of the trade worldwide. In order to achieve the aim the following tasks were solved: to analyse electronic trade as a part of electronic commerce; to examine global features of search and browse of antiquarian and used books on the Internet; to examine global features of description webforms of antiquarian and used books trade on the Internet; to examine main features of search, browse and description webforms of antiquarian and used books trade on the Internet in Lithuania; to compare the main features of global and Lithuanian antiquarian and used books trade on the Internet By using descriptive, document analysis and comparative methods, the following results were achieved. The trade model „user to user“ is the most common in antiquarian and used book global Internet trade. There are some differences between antiquarian and used book description webforms in global Internet trade but there are no such differences in Lithuanian electronic bookshops. Antiquarian books are being sold in one electronic bookshop in Lithuania (Super.lt). Used books are being sold in two electronic bookshops in Lithuania (Super.lt and Books.lt). The WebPages of Lithuanian electronic bookshops are well adjusted for universal search engines such as Google, though they are not accessible through specialized book search engines such as AddAll or BookFinder.com. The search fields in Lithuanian bookshops are not enough adjusted for antiquarian or used book search because one cannot search only trough antiquarian and/or used book titles. The browse options in Lithuanian bookshops are not enough sufficient for antiquarian or used book browse basically because one cannot sort books by date. Lithuanian bookshops should provide more information (especially visual) about antiquarian books condition. Lithuanian bookshops should try selling used books right alongside new copies, which is very common in global used book trade on the Internet. There is a lack of trade model „user to user“ in Lithuanian antiquarian and used book trade on the Internet. |
