In the beginning the tactile and olfactory pleasures of handling old books were regularly cited as an essential feature of bibliophily. This pleasant surprise was due, I think, to the fact that while nearly everyone we knew had little or no trouble imagining the likely disastrous outcomes that would result from cancelling the fairs, few had yet anticipated the many good things that would occur when all the complications and constraints of physical book fairs were removed and alternative events arrived to take their place. Looking at our own data, along with the anecdotal information we were receiving from others, tells me that the first year or two of lockdown was, in fact, profitable for many and manageable for most. There is, of course, no published statistical data on the subject. In retrospect we can see that the COVID-related anxieties of June 2020 proved to be a bit inflated, at least with regard to antiquarian booksellers. Much panic and moaning inevitably ensued. At that time there was widespread concern within the book trade that the resulting universal closure of book fairs would bring in its wake the end of bookselling as we knew it. It has not gone unnoticed that this summer has marked three full years since the first virtual book fairs suddenly arrived on the bookselling scene and attempted to fill the vacuum created by COVID 19. A paid charity preview will also take place on Friday at 12 noon. The next opportunity for all this to happen will be the Greenwich Village Virtual Antiquarian Book and Ephemera Fair, open to everyone on Saturday February 24th at 12 noon ET. All of them will be matched against the items in each new Getman’s Virtual Book Fair and then continue to be included in active viaLibri searches until the fair is closed on Sunday.

This will also be good news for the exhibitors. The Libribot does all the work for you before the doors open. With a Getman virtual fair, however, viaLibri can do the searching for you and then email you a notification when matches have been found. That can be difficult if you have a variety of interests and wants, all of which need to be searched for separately, one after the other. This will be especially good news if you are among the many viaLibri users who let the Libribot automate searching for the items listed on their want lists.Īs we all know, when a virtual book fair opens its imaginary doors there is always a virtual rush to find and claim all the choicest items first. I’m confident that our customers will be pleased to find these books now included in their results when they search for them manually. We were already searching 160 different sources, and are always looking for more, so in January we again added to the count and began including books and ephemera from Getman’s Virtual Book Fairs – the oldest, largest and best known virtual book fair platform. Attentive users may have noticed that we recently added another new source for items to be included when searching for books and ephemera on viaLibri.

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