Locating and buying out-of-print, rare and antiquarian books has traditionally been time-consuming and expensive. Not anymore! Online Resources for Out-of-Print Books (http://www.auldbooks.com/biblio/other/op_services.html) from the Auldbooks Bibliophile Bookshelf gives Web page or e-mail addresses for online search services and mailing lists. This site includes three free, easy-to-use search services that have proven to be quite effective.

Advanced Book Exchange (http://www.abebooks.com/) is a book-exchange service for the out-of-print, used, rare and antiquarian book buyer or seller. ABE lists the combined inventory of its member booksellers in a database that anyone in the world can search using the Web. You can search by any combination of author, title, publisher and keyword. If you can't find the book you want, you can save your search (up to 100) and you will be notified by e-mail when a matching book is found.

Interloc (http://www.interloc.com/) is both a subscriber system for professionals and the largest site for out-of-print books on the Internet, with more than 3 million books, maps, autographs, documents, manuscripts, ephemera, magazines and scholarly journals. Searching is easy and using the public database is completely free. Nearly 2,000 subscribers from around the world list their books for sale (3 million) and books they are looking to buy (nearly a million). Interloc's private database system allows subscribers to get a first look at new listings that are held at least seven days before they are offered on the public database. A message to info@interloc.com will give you an information packet describing the service and its fees.

Bibliofind (http://www.bibliofind.com/) also boasts of being the largest booksearch site, with 3 million old, used, rare, out-of-print and antiquarian books offered by more than 1,000 booksellers around the world. You can give a single, simple command and Bibliofind will search the inventories of second-hand and rare booksellers to find copies of the book you want in a matter of seconds. Bibliofind offers no preview privileges or discounted prices to insiders, so you can be assured the book you want is still available when listed.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the ASCIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Sue Neumeister and Lori Widzinski, University Libraries