"Collector" fields — Pricing and condition

Lucy and I are releasing four new fields—List Price, Purchase Price, Value and Condition—designed for collectors and of interest to members generally because now, for the first time, you can get an estimate of the value of your library. (Mine is worth around $45k. In theory!)

On Edit Books, the fields look like this, in a new "Collector" section, together with a moved "From Where?" field.



In the catalog, the fields look like this. They can be sorted:



By default "List Prices" is filled in with whatever list-price information we have for your currency, based on the ISBN, in green text (Here as everywhere, green text means "global" or "calculated" text, not text you entered) If you have a lot of recent books, 80-90% of your books should have prices. If your library is older, the numbers will be lower (As a baseline, @ablachly has prices on 81% of her books, I have 70%.) The data is based on Bowker's Books in Print. We use the data they have. Unfortunately, publishers can change list prices without changing ISBNs. So these prices largely represent what it would cost to re-buy your books at today's prices, unless the book is out of print.

You can add the fields to your catalog here: https://www.librarything.com/settings/display

They are all in the "Miscellaneous" section.

Your currency can be changed here: https://www.librarything.com/settings/account

Your currency is your choice, but we made a guess, based on the country we detected when you created the account and, if you have more than 100 books, on the availability of prices for your ISBNs. So, in theory, if you were living in Germany, but your books were all Canadian editions, we guessed you wanted Canadian dollars. But it's a guess—and can be changed.

The currency sets two things:

1. The "green" values that come in, if we have the data.
2. How we interpret your own edits.

Number two is crucial, and involves a bit of magic. We wanted to make these free-text fields—but smart ones. You can always be explicit. If something cost you £2, you can write £2, £2 (GPB) or £2 GBP or 2 GBP and it will understand what you mean. If you just put "2," it will understand you to be using your current default currency. As you will see, the calculated value is given alongside what you entered, so you can understand what our system thought. Being free text means you could enter non-numerical information, like "Free" or "A buck or two." If you enter something like "USED $2" it will try to parse that—for example concluding you mean $2 USD.

Finally, we have the BEGINNINGS of a charts and graphs page. Here's mine:



I say the beginnings because it's somewhat under-cooked. For example, the current "List Price Total" works different than calculations elsewhere, attempting to convert all currencies into US dollars. It's also lacking a breakdown of how many books lack prices. I'm glad to heard what you want on this page, but don't criticize it for now. It's not done.

What else?

1. At present all four fields are private. We may provide a setting to open them up.
2. Sorting includes some rules about currency conversion. Obviously we can only convert by a fixed exchange rate. Prices do not currently have dates to them! So it's approximate.

That's it. Tell us what you think?

Note: This is a somewhat rushed announcement, and the feature has some rough edges. We wanted to get it out today, for the LibraryThing Birthday. I'll be working this weekend, but Lucy will not. Not all problems will be fixed. Some enhancements will have to wait for monday.

I'd like to be able to click through to the list of titles in each category.

I'm also curious to know where the values are being sourced from; I really don't believe my most expensive book is Sharon Green's Prophecy at £499... I rather suspect that £4.99 was more accurate, but I suppose it's one of Amazon's funny prices.

>2 Maddz: It's from Bowker Books in Print. I can check on that price later. It may well be wonky.

>3 timspalding: Well, Amazon.co.uk has the most expensive at £94. And I think they're out of print anyway.

This makes absolutely no sense for a collection accumulated over several decades from dozens of countries.

>5 MarthaJeanne:

That's why you can edit all the values. And if you don't want to track pricing, you don't need to.

>5 MarthaJeanne: Agree. Plus I have a lot of paperbacks purchased in the UK but were imports from the US, so the list prices wouldn't be accurate anyway.

Pricing isn't much use to me, because the most important part of my collection (traditional folk music books) are almost all out of print, and there are two kinds of sellers: those who know nothing about folk music and charge a pittance and those who know a lot about folk music and charge an arm and a leg. :-) Not much in between. :-)

But I really appreciate "Condition"! I've taken to putting that in the comments, but this is much better.

As I’m not a collector or someone who’s keeping very good track of book purchase costs (I only started adding what I paid for books in the last year) so I realise I’m not the target audience for this feature but I have a couple of questions.

* Can you add prices in multiple different currencies? I buy books on holiday in different countries and always use the local currency when I pay. I’d want to add the local currency here to, even though most of my purchases are in SEK.
* You say that the system can understand multiple ways of writing currency “shorthand” £, GBP, etc.) but what do you do when different currencies have the same shorthand? SEK, NOK and DDK are all regularly shortened to “kr” but they are not worth the same. For instance, DDK is worth significantly more then SEK at the moment (which is very tough on the wallet of a Swedish person who regularly travels through Denmark and would love to do more shopping).
* Is the price always converted to USD for the graph? For me, that wouldn’t be very valuable as I don’t keep track of the SEK to USD convention rate (I just assume it’s around 10-1 but that’s not very useful when talking about exact amounts).
* I’ve heard of Bowker (on LT) before but don’t know much about them/it. Do we know how accurate it is with non-American/non-English language stuff?
* And lastly, will we be able to hide the green text or otherwise stop it from appearing? I know this is something others like having (all over the catalogue) but personally I’d rather not have any info at all in a field than have something I didn’t add - especially if that data isn’t correct, and the green data is nearly always wrong in my experience.

The green text for List Price feels weird to me. Unlike other instances of it, where it's sourced from shared data about the work, this is meant for specific copies. But since it's calculated and green means calculated, I guess it's not wrong...

>3 timspalding: I'm not sure why it's showing A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching as $65 - that's unusually high for a recently published ebook. and Amazon has it listed for $9.99 I have a few other books in my Currently Reading collection showing as $65 that really shouldn't be, too.

>9 PawsforThought:

Can you add prices in multiple different currencies? I buy books on holiday in different countries and always use the local currency when I pay. I’d want to add the local currency here to, even though most of my purchases are in SEK.

Yes. You can add prices in any currency. We COULD show prices in all currencies we have data for, and this might be helpful for a few, but I think it would be too much for 99% of members.

You say that the system can understand multiple ways of writing currency “shorthand” £, GBP, etc.) but what do you do when different currencies have the same shorthand? SEK, NOK and DDK are all regularly shortened to “kr” but they are not worth the same. For instance, DDK is worth significantly more then SEK at the moment (which is very tough on the wallet of a Swedish person who regularly travels through Denmark and would love to do more shopping).

You'll have to try them out—and no changes will happen this weekend. But your answer is also there--use the three-letter code.

* Is the price always converted to USD for the graph? For me, that wouldn’t be very valuable as I don’t keep track of the SEK to USD convention rate (I just assume it’s around 10-1 but that’s not very useful when talking about exact amounts).

Yes, I think so. See my comments about the charts section being unfinished. Lucy will be working on it on Tuesday.

I’ve heard of Bowker (on LT) before but don’t know much about them/it. Do we know how accurate it is with non-American/non-English language stuff?

They are exceedingly accurate so far as it goes. They get their data from publishers directly, including basically everything published in the US and Australia as a matter of legal requirement. (They are the US copyright agency.) That does not, however, mean, the data is always correct and up-to-date. And, as I mentioned, publishers change prices WITHOUT changing the ISBN, so the price you paid may not be the price a book is currently sold for.

That said, I'm interested to track down problems—after the weekend.

* And lastly, will we be able to hide the green text or otherwise stop it from appearing? I know this is something others like having (all over the catalogue) but personally I’d rather not have any info at all in a field than have something I didn’t add - especially if that data isn’t correct, and the green data is nearly always wrong in my experience.

Yeah, I'll make a feature to allow that. We have several "I don't want this!" options already. Give me a little while to do it.

I must say that it’s easier for me to have “from where” right by “date acquired”, as I am unlikely to use the Collectors area very often. And I use “from where” almost every time I add a book.

Thanks for the input. That's inconvenient. Let's see what other people think. I think you can see the rationale, but it does mess you up.

>11 timspalding: Thanks for answering, and THANK YOU for making an opt-out system for the green text. You just made my weekend!

>12 lilithcat: Ooh, that’s a very good point. I also (try to) add where I bought something and the date I bought it as soon as possible after purchase and having them split up is an inconvenience.

>13 timspalding: Definitely inconvenient. The date acquired should be next to 'From where', wherever you choose to locate that field.

Agreed with >12 lilithcat:, >13 timspalding:, >15 PawsforThought:, and >16 Maddz:.

It would be useful to me to have Date Acquired with From Where?
It is of no special value to me to have Date Acquired with the reading dates.
However, it might be amusing to have a calculated "latency" - the time between acquisition and start reading. I can imagine a graph that distributes the "read" portion of the catalog between "Read on the day of acquisition" and "Read decades after acquisition."

Oh certainly inconvenient - I use the date acquired and where from all the time and now - more scrolling. Ugh.

>12 lilithcat: I must say that it’s easier for me to have “from where” right by “date acquired
Ditto. Date acquired and where from go hand-in-hand. I will probably use the purchase price and condition fields at the same time. It would be nice for me if they were in the same group as date and place acquired, but I understand that doesn't fit with the intention of the new fields.

>17 paradoxosalpha: Oh, that’s a fun idea! My chart would look very strange, as I often read the books before purchasing them and catalogue them years before reading.

I guess “List price total” isn’t actually doing any conversions at present, just using values that are available in the default currency? — I changed my currency from GBP to EUR and the notional value of my library went down from £20k to €293 (slightly less than 8 cents a book)!

>17 paradoxosalpha: a latency graph would be interesting to me, overlaid with From where? somehow - I used to find that books I bought would languish in favor of library books, to the point that I joked about borrowing books I already owned just to trick my brain into reading them.

>22 keristars: books I bought would languish in favor of library books

Oh, indeed! I have had to cut myself off from the public library on occasion, just to discipline myself to work on the owned TBR stack(s).

Okay, I think enough people are irrated that, next time I have a little spare time, I'll move it back.

>17 paradoxosalpha: >23 paradoxosalpha: I use entry date as a reasonable proxy for acquisition date, (because I don’t have data for books acquired before LT days anyway) and I have wasted time in the past dumping it all into Excel sheets and calculating latency times… I don’t think I learnt much, but it was fun.

>24 timspalding: It's been strange that Date Acquired and From where? were under the Reading Dates subhed, so I think putting them with the price paid field is a good idea.

Mostly I think we all just want the two fields to be next to each other, since they're logically linked.

My suggestion (as the UI/X guy around here). Put the acquisition fields in their own group. We could end up adding more to that anyway. (Acquisition notes, etc.).
They certainly don't go with Reading Dates (although I get that people may start a book on the same day they acquire it). Putting them directly after each other in this order would still make that easy.

Reading Dates
--- Reading dates stuff.
Acquisition
--- Aquisition Date
--- From Where
Collector
---New fields

>27 conceptDawg: Even more perfect!

>24 timspalding:

Just as a thought: While I agree with those who say that From Where and Date Acquired should be together... is there any reason why From Where can't be in both places, so one can enter the two together but see the data wherever it's convenient?

>27 conceptDawg:

I like that!

>29 waltzmn: Mostly because that becomes a technical nightmare (and also possibly confusing to users) because you must keep both places in sync in realtime, while editing. Otherwise the user doesn't know which field is the "right" one if one is changed. Just generally confusing, for novice users especially.

I love having list price/value. We get a lot of donated books and some of them look like they might have resale value. I've spent a lot of time looking up used book prices but didn't have any where to keep track of them. I'll definitely use both the List Price & Value fields in one of my display settings in Your Books. For adding values on my current listings, I'll probably make edits from this display.
And then I can sort from hi to low value & quickly identify books which may not have much local reader interest but which could garner us some much needed funds for more useful books.
The way they display in Edit Books looks fine for my needs.

I have moved the "From where?" field back to where it was. While I can see various solutions, I think the disruption merits a reversal.

I have moved the "From where?" field back to where it was. While I can see various solutions, I think the disruption merits a reversal.

>34 timspalding: Thank you!

>33 timspalding:

Thank you, Tim. This kind of responsiveness to what users want is one of the reasons I appreciate LT so much! I don't always agree with changes to the site, but I know that you always listen to us, and that makes a difference.

>1 timspalding: Hello
When I see price tags on the books I enter into my LibraryThing DB, I add them, currently this is in some private field, but I will move them over to purchase price. I have bought books in over ten currencies and should now thus define a default one - and, if I am to do this properly, I should also convert the prices at the exchange rate for the year in which I bought the book. Only time will tell I have the patience to do that.
Anyway, I think that this part of the data entry is rather for the user to define, so I wouldn't expect you to want to look up rates for any number of currencies over any number of years.
However, if you do decide to take this further, perhaps one thing to consider - if such a thing exists - is to try to access "somewhere" that has prices for books no longer in print. You say you have a 70% hit-rate, mine is much lower, simply because of books I have. Fair enough. If such a DB were accessible, I wonder what the best key would be to identify a book. ISBNs change perhaps more often than the content of a book that is re-published, but searching by title runs the inherent risk that you might find a totally different book. Anyway, you will no doubt know more about this. Thanks for adding the fields, I hope others find them useful too, as it is nice how your site colourfully presents me with metadata that I have never considered before.

>37 renaissancelibrary:

"somewhere" that has prices for books no longer in print

The difficulty there, of course, is that the value of such a book (and even of one still in print) can vary wildly depending on condition.

>12 lilithcat: I agree that moving the From Where field is inconvenient since I'm not going to be using the other Collector fields.

>39 jjwilson61:

It's moved back.

"somewhere" that has prices for books no longer in print

I have to talk to Bowker about historical list prices. My guess is that they don't have them. Basically nobody else would want them.

We could perhaps get historical list prices from photos of the back of books—something we're working on.

I do think the current prices are good for the important use this data has—insurance. The list price for a book, and for your library, is what it would take to replace it. That is, now if you catalog your books and lose them in a fire, you can hand your insurance your LibraryThing catalog as proof of the replacement-cost of what you lost.

As for the "value" of books, the general rule is that, once bought, books are essentially valueless. People are often surprised by this. I regularly get emails with a photograph of some random, unappealing book from 1880 asking me what it's worth. I tell them I'm not an appraiser, and direct them elsewhere. But that's a dodge, because the books are almost certainly without value. Most ordinary people don't see a lot of 100-year-old books, so they think that if a book is 100 years old, it's a priceless relic. But old books have no intrinsic value. They don't see them because people don't want them. Further, most books from 100 years ago were printed on acid paper and are in terrible shape. A book needs to be many hundreds of years old, or a first edition of a famous book, before it becomes valuable. Maybe if someone killed a famous person by hitting them with the book, then it would be valuable. Yes, it may cost money to buy it on Abebooks, but much of that is the cost of doing business. You couldn't sell it to a used bookseller for what it costs to buy it from them. If you tried to sell it yourself, you'd spend dozens of hours getting the books online, endless hassle with shipping and returns, and twelve months later most of your stock would be unsold. There's a reason so many books are a penny on Amazon. The only thing of value is gouging people on the shipping and handling.

Anyway, sorry to be a downer. In theory we could try to get data from Biblio, Abebooks or Alibris. I suppose used prices might help for insurance purposes, if the book is out of print.

My own feeling about this is simple. I saw my parents' 17k books priced at just over what it would cost to haul them to the dump. I know that'll happen to my own books too. My kid will take a handful if I'm lucky, but his interests diverge from mine. I might be able to donate a hundred or so to some classics grad student. The rest will go into the dump or a used bookstore, for pennies.

So what am I going to do? I'm going to treat them as disposable objects, for my enjoyment alone. I'm going to write in them whenever I want. I'm going to use a pen if that's what I have handy. I'll dog-ear them if I please too. Après moi, le dump.

>26 keristars: Mostly I think we all just want the (Date Acquired and From where?) fields to be next to each other, since they're logically linked.

Yes! I edit metadata on almost all the books I import, and I've been noticing it makes a huge difference in both my speed & my accuracy if logically related data are far apart on the "form", i.e. if I have to scroll back & forth to check/correct 2 pieces of very related info. This actually holds true to some extent for books I'm manually entering, as well.

>41 LeslieWx:

I moved it!

>40 timspalding: As for the "value" of books, the general rule is that, once bought, books are essentially valueless.

I would mostly second this, but with a caveat: If you know the market for old books, they can have value, even if they're less than a century old. Specialized collections do much better than general reading. My traditional folk music collection very well might sell for $10,000 in the right hands. My science fiction library, which has as many or more volumes, is so useless that I haven't even bothered cataloging most of it. I only catalog the ones for which I have critical commentaries or the like, or which I am re-reading for research purposes. Similarly, my textual criticism and Middle English libraries would have value; my history and science collections have effectively none (though I catalog them, in part, to be able to find things.)

Popularity matters. An interesting illustration here: the works of Lewis Carroll. There were two first editions of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Why two? Because the first edition was partially suppressed because John Tenniel didn't like the woodcut versions of his illustrations.) Copies of the both editions will cost you tens of thousands, and many of them are in university libraries.

Copies of Sylvie and Bruno, on the other hand, are almost a glut on the market, even though also by Carroll. I got a first edition of that for $30.

And then there is the First Folio of William Shakespeare. There are about 200 copies of it. Any other book that age existing in 200 copies would sell for a relative pittance, not the millions of dollars you can get for a First Folio. Normally I hate to sell a book, but if I had a First Folio, I would sell it like a shot and use it to buy some actual rare books. :-p

>42 timspalding: Awesome! Have been messing around in Talk before "hitting the books" again :)

>40 timspalding: the general rule is that, once bought, books are essentially valueless.

It's rarity versus demand, and the books most people have aren't rare. And ebooks a lot of times have killed the used market; if it was printed before 1930, HathiTrust or Archive.org or Google Books probably has a copy of it you can view for free. In my own sphere of roleplaying games, huge series of what were once rare books are now legally available on PDF; if you can get all of Changeling in PDF for $20, why spend--and store--what it's going to cost to get the books, even if it's just shipping and handling?

I love this! I have been storing purchase price in a private field, but will use this now. I agree that "from where" belongs with "date acquired".

It is very sad to think of many wonderful books ending up in a dump somewhere. But having them end up with some designer who folds the pages to make lampshades or whatever is only marginally better.

>45 prosfilaes:

you can get all of Changeling in PDF for $20, why spend--and store--what it's going to cost to get the books, even if it's just shipping and handling?

Because to many of us, print books are preferable to digital.

>47 lilithcat: Because to many of us, print books are preferable to digital.

What @lilithcat said.

I readily concede the advantage of electronic formats for something that's a brief item that will be read only once, or for a reference you want to search. But going to bed with a real book to read will always be preferable, at least to me.

And, for a really old book, there is always the issue of what is behind the book. The printer's copy (a manuscript? What manuscript?). The planning of the edition (how much type will we need? Which fonts shall we use?). The structure of the page. For something really old, there are actually mysteries there: Do we know who published it? And when? Is this the original edition, or were there others before that? Where did the errors in this copy come from? From the typesetter, or from his source? Books are sometimes more than just the words they contain. You don't get that from an electronic book.

A good rule of thumb is that any high price you find online for an old book is the price that nobody is willing to pay.

Books from the 1950s tend to be the worst for acid paper. Older books often ore in much better condition.

>1 timspalding: I like the idea, but ISBN only appeared late 1960s, early 1970s and for my collection which contains a large number of pre 1960 books, that sort function wouldn't work. I don't know if most countries utilise ISBN either as I only have three languages and two of those go back to the 1800s.
Oh and I have Folio Society books which still don't have ISBN.

>48 waltzmn: Books are sometimes more than just the words they contain. You don't get that from an electronic book.

This is true, but it's also why I've grown to think of book-content and book-object as very different things since I've become unable to read the hundreds of books on my shelves, and must use the digital copies instead.

My attachment to the objects is still there, but it's different. I like seeing them and having the associations/memories brought up, much like photos of loved ones. If they are valuable, it's for the reasons any object has value, regardless of the bookness.

That said, I don't own any books that are particularly rare or have special marginalia. I don't own any antiques with value beyond sentiment either, for that matter.

This is a roundabout way of saying I've come to the same conclusion as >40 timspalding: as the general worthlessness of book-objects. There are exceptions of rarity/demand, but book-objects' value is almost entirely in the associations and sentiment.

nb: I'm a barbarian who thinks Terri Gross's way of reading (with lots of dog-ears) is great, and that art made from books is an excellent way to reuse the materials...

>49 MarthaJeanne: Books from the 1950s tend to be the worst for acid paper. Older books often ore in much better condition.

Acid paper became common starting in about the 1890s. You're right, books from before that are often in better shape. My first edition of Ulysses S. Grant's Personal Memoirs is not in the best condition -- the binding is in pretty bad shape -- but the paper is fine. My copy of J. Franklin Jameson's Dictionary of United States History, from 1894, is also good, and also my first edition of Sylvie and Bruno -- all from 1885-1895. But stuff from shortly after 1900... ugh.

Really early books were generally made from rag cloth; those stand up even better.

There is another problem with books from the mid-nineteenth century: Has anyone heard about arsenical books? The ones with bright green bindings, like the wallpapers that supposedly killed Napoleon? The green is an arsenic compound. The books are actually poisonous to the touch (although it takes a fair bit of handling to really get sick).

https://sites.udel.edu/poisonbookproject/resources/arsenical-books-database/

And, yes, I have a three-volume set of such (State of New York Annual Report of the Adjutant General 1868). Maybe I should will them to my worst enemy, if I can figure out a worst enemy. Maybe some congresscritter or other. :-p

>40 timspalding: The head of Special Collections at my local college library has been enthusiastic about accepting some of my offerings. Also some of the professors.

>50 nadineeg:

I don't know if most countries utilise ISBN

They do. The "I" stands for "International", and ISBNs are issued by the agency responsible for the specific country.

This is a very interesting set of data to include. I'm fooling around with it. I wonder what terms the "condition" field will accept. I've got it to take "new" and "used" but other typical condition terminology that I used as a bookseller, such as "as new", "vg", "very good" defaults to "worn, missing cassette" when I hit save. You're joking, right?

I'm also interested in the fact that library books that I checked out ("read but unowned") and discarded books (in my "gone" collection) have list prices assigned and wondering how that will work with the graph when the graphs go live and LT tries to assess the total value of my collection.

>55 muumi:
There's been a bug report submitted for the glitch, at: https://www.librarything.com/topic/373455

>55 muumi: You can filter Charts & Graphs to only Your Library, so it doesn't count Read But Unowned or Gone. :)

But it is a neat little data point for those - if you wanted to buy them all right now, what would it cost you?

>57 keristars: that's an interesting point, and I am hoping that as the system gets more accurate data, those prices will become more accurate. There are some odd discrepancies still.

Good to know that I can filter Charts and Graphs manually, but really I think it should default to books that one actually owns.

>58 muumi: The trouble is that the system doesn't know what books you actually own!

I don't use "My Library", and some people put everything in "My Library" while using tags to indicate ownership. Part of the reason I don't use "My Library" is because I interpret it as a redundant "All Collections".

There's just too many ways to use collections and think of ownership.

I hadn't got around to reading the newsletter beforehand, so was pleasantly surprised to see this new field. I only found it because I had wondered where the "from where" option had moved to. Found it, but while inputting some books it got moved back. Good to see it wasn't my mind playing tricks on me.

I love this new feature. I've been writing for years the amount I paid for a book in the private comments section, and some additional information for example, it cost me AUD0 because I borrowed it via KU, but I also use to note what it would cost me to buy the book. Same when I borrow through the Audible Plus option. I don't bother with the comments now for these types of books, but it's good to be able record what I pay for an Audio book as an Audible member versus the cost for a non-member. The List Price versus Purchase Price helps me see how much I was able to save in buying a book since I buy frequently, I like many people like to get a good bargain when I buy a book.

I am now slowly moving all this information from the Private Comments to the new fields. It will be great to see how that tallies up and then cross that again my excel spreadsheet. Yes, I use by LT and an excel spreadsheet with complex formulates to track my book hobby (reading and purchasing) for specific information I want to capture. I find LT great when I'm out and about and need to check if I've already got the book.

Appreciate all the hard work that goes into managing the website/app and the additional features you create to improve the app for everyone.

>1 timspalding: Mine are all empty, since Bowker won't have any of them. But looking at my TinyCat entries (in MARC view) I find a lot of them with 020 c filled in:

001 97549803
003 MePoLT
005 20250901125829.0
008 000000s1974 dk 00| f rus d
020 $a8742977703 $ckr. 12.80
040 $dMePoLT $erda

although some also have $cpris ikke oplyst
(i.e. no price given)

I'll probably write a script to compare "List price" from LT and 020$c so I'm fine with not having the field auto-populated. I just wanted to point out to others that there was a source to the price information hiding in plain sight :-)

At a guess "prices" for 2500 out of 10000 books in my library are to be found in 020$c so I'll be busy for a week or so :-)

How should I specify prices to be consistent? DKK 23.45 or 23.45 DKK.
I'll go with 23.45 DKK, 3.45 GDP, 5.23 USD, unless there is some reason not to.

Can the "condition" field be added to power edit?

>61 bnielsen:

Hmm. I'll ask @ccatalfo to do a look into this—how man we can pick up from MARC.

>63 timspalding: Some of them looks a bit difficult to parse, i.e.

123233241 \\$a0330283928 $cĐ6,99

where I suspect that Đ6,99 is actually £6,99 rather than Vietnamese Dong.

and

=365 \\$b198 $cF

where 198F = ??? I don't know. Old French Francs, maybe?

I personally don't believe I'll be using the price fields, although when I finally get around to cataloguing the Special Collection, that may change — it would be nice to have that data, at least for some peace of mind around insurance. I'm glad it was added anyhow, because I know it had been requested a very lot.

I'm thrilled about the addition of a 'condition' field, which I had previously been using a comment field for! Speaking of... Any plans to expand power edit to the comment fields?

Over the weekend I've added a ton (actually more than 3000) List_Prices to my books. One interesting but irritating finding is that my library sources seems to be lacking 020 c for recently published books. (I was trying to see if I could guess the inflation rate by looking at price per page for each publication year.)

I recommend adding TWD, THB, VND to the currency settings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Taiwan_dollar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thai_baht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_%C4%91%E1%BB%93ng

A lower-priority recommendation is adding aliases for currencies, such as RMB = CNY and NTD = NT$ = TWD.

>1 timspalding:

I don't think the list price and price paid accepts £sd. For example 2/6 parses as £26. -/2/6 doesn't parse. Although to be honest totalling (and showing a bar graph) of book prices over 55+ years does seem to be a bit useless statistically speaking even without considering decimalisation.

Are we able to hide these as we can other new fields we don't want?

>68 andyl: I have a few of those that appears when I look at the "MARC view" of a record in TinyCat.

I didn't have much of a clue what 2/6 meant :-) or -/2/6 for that matter. £sd indeed :-) Thanks for that hint!

>69 MarthaJeanne: What do you mean by hide them? Hide them where?

>70 bnielsen: Or 12.5p after decimalisation (0.125 GBP) (except the 0.5p coin was withdrawn in 1984).

This I think is where list prices fall down: currency type changes over the years. The UK decimalised 15th February 1971, and there have been tweaks to legitimate tender ever since (there's a suggestion that copper coinage will be withdrawn in the next few years). Then of course there was the switch from the old national currencies to Euros in the Euro zone.

To go through my library updating list prices will be a real pain, especially if I have to decimalise old £sd prices.

Current value is even more problematic, especially when the work is no longer in print and has no electronic edition. Is there anyway to get prices from Abebooks automatically?

>71 knerd.knitter: Particularly in Edit book, so I don't have to scroll so much. Basically, I don't want to see them anywhere.

>73 MarthaJeanne: I didn't think we had the ability to hide things on edit book.

>72 Maddz: Yes, there are plenty of things that can go wrong. I have some List_Prices in DMark and Francs (don't even know if they are old or new Francs) and a bit of stuff like 2/6 and 2/- and L3.

"... the 0.5p coin was withdrawn in 1984" Thanks! That explains the hole in my old pants :-)

Even worse I think the Danish library sources dropped price in 020 c some years ago. I tried plotting price/page against publication year to see if I could calibrate an inflation curve, but data stopped around 2021.

>74 knerd.knitter: https://www.librarything.com/settings/other

I don't want this feature!
Hide pagination, dimensions, weight and volume fields

I assume that other people see these on the edit book page.

>76 MarthaJeanne: Oh, I forgot about those. I believe Tim was going to add something to be able to hide these new fields, but I'll have to check with him.

I LOVE the price fields! Thanks so much!

I have a British paperback Fontana, 1969 with this in the Marc record
020 $c5/- (pbk)
Is this 5 shilling = ??? GBP
0.50 GDP would sound plausible. 5.00 GDP not so much.

If I get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd right, it's

5/- = 5 shilling = 25 pence = 0.25 GBP
25/- = 25 shilling = 125 pence = 1.25 GBP

I have three paperbacks and one hardcover with that sort of prices, so I'm done quickly.

Note to self: 132614286 OR 40655074 OR 46372915 OR 45521470
will find the four books again (just in case I'm completely wrong about 5/- = 0.25).

Next up was some prices in L:
L.10.99
L.6.99
L10000
L14.800

The first two are British and the last two were Italian Lira.

>79 bnielsen: That's right: pre-decimal currency was 12 old pence (d) to the shilling (s), and 20 shillings to the pound (l), giving 240d to the pound. This was decimalised to 100 new pence (p) to the pound. So 1/- equated to 5p or 0.05 GBP.

Some things about coinage: a crown was 5/-, half-a-crown was 2/6, which explains some pricing. For even older prices, you may find guineas (21 shillings) but that was usually for horse sales. From memory:

1 farthing (copper coin) = 0.25d
1 halfpenny (copper coin) = 0.5d
1 penny (copper coin) = 1d
Thruppence (three penny bit) (copper coin I think) = 3d
Sixpence (tanner) (silver coin) = 6d
Shilling (bob) (silver coin) = 12d
Half-a-crown (silver coin) = 2/6 = 30d
Crown (silver coin) = 5/- = 60d
10 shillings (paper note) = 10/- = 120d
1 pound (paper note) = 20/- = 240d
5 pounds (paper note) = 100/-
10 pounds (paper note) = 200/-

A guinea (21/-) and the later sovereign (20/-) were gold coins. The sovereign is now a bullion coin; it was withdrawn in 1914.

>80 Maddz:
The threepence/threpenny was a brass-looking coin, 12-sided. :-)

>81 Nevov: Yes, but I can't remember if it was copper or not. I think we may have one somewhere around; I know we kept sixpences for a time because they went in the Christmas pudding back when my Mum used to make them.

>82 Maddz:
The older threepences used to be silver as well. The amount of silver in each coin was reduced (just the same as the sixpence) and eventually they went to just brass.

>80 Maddz:
Also a two-shilling piece, a florin.

>84 affle: I'm old enough to remember those... It's been over 50 years now!

This is pretty neat, except now I have yet another reason to spend hours trawling through my entire collection editing, cataloguing, and organizing lol

>86 GandalfTheGreen: Same here. Some of the prices I've taken from MARC view in TinyCat are too large because I've picked another edition at first then edited it in LT. So that comes back to haunt me now :-)
I.e. a paperback from 1972 for 10 GBP ? No, that was because I had picked a later edition that was a hardcover from 2010 or so.

>87 bnielsen: Oh, don't get me started! Fortunately I buy a lot of books online and save a good chunk of the receipts, so whenever I get bored and want to be super accurate I'll use those for the ones I don't remember.

But the value thing is throwing me off a bit because I collect so many books that have VERY limited print runs (think 500 or 1000 books) and they're sometimes impossible to find at any price. For example, I'm looking to pick up a copy of a historical fiction book by a not-very-well-known historian/author, but it's long out of print and the only 2 copies I see available anywhere are asking $700 and $2000 respectively! If I buy the cheaper one, what's my copy of the book 'worth?'

I know it's mostly for fun and we mustn't take it too seriously, but it's interesting to think about

Currently I pick up a lot of books that are just left out on a "take for free" shelve. So their worth is probably 0.00 in any currency. Hmm, that made me wonder if we should make a Fahrenheit currency where 32 Fahrenheits = $0.00 :-)

>66 bnielsen: Current standards are not to use 020 c , so newer books most likely won't have it
https://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/0xx/020.html

>90 Proclus: Yep, catalogers can only add the price at time of publication, so I don't know how useful an 020 c would be, since prices change so much. I don't think they've been using the 020 c for quite some time.

>90 Proclus: and >91 atozgrl: Thanks! I'll input List Price whenever I can find it.
I've picked up quite a few older books where the information was either hard or impossible to find, so the 020c on older records came in handy.

>73 MarthaJeanne: , if you wanted to hide items from that form, it could be done with the Stylus browser plugin and a CSS stylesheet where each field you want to hide getting a property of display:none. This may seem technical but it is easier than having the LT developers create a complex option system the only 1% or fewer members would use. If you want to explore this, make a post about it with the URL you want to affect in the Hacking LibraryThingb group.

James

I can see needing to make a list view that embraces basic book details (author, title, publication, year), acquisition (where from, when), and these to work through a list. PowerEdit is a must.

This can be a starting point for people who are looking for building a list for an appraiser to work on for either replacement value or quick sale price value for a donation.

Although they are not supposed to be, condition grades are very subjective and it is necessary to grade the book and jacket separately.

Naturally the presence or absence of a jacket can have a huge influence on "value".

To translate the bookseller condition grades into more meaningful terms, I encourage people to work with a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is a perfect like-new book. These are the terms that correspond.

10/10 — Fine (there is no Fine+, Very Fine, or Mint in responsible book grading)

8/10 — Very Good (generally the minimum collectible grade)

6/10 — Good (a euphemism for a reading copy)

4/10 — Fair

Generally there is a relationship between condition and value. It depends a bit on the book but it can work like this if a 10/10 is worth $100:

10/10 — $100.

8/10 — $50.

6/10 — $25 (but might be hard to sell at any price)

Some books won't sell at any price if they don't have a dust jacket. Often the value of a copy in DJ is 3x to 5x the value of one without. Some books can beb 50x to 100x if a scarce (uncommon and in demand) jacket is found.

While this isn't an appraisal system, it can help with the documentation of an appraisal.

A self evaluation of values is something but any use for insurance purposes will require a more formal (paid) appraisal.

What is provided has some interesting possibilities even though it does not cover all possibiblities or criteria.

You might need some kind of "pricing notes" field for commentary or comparable prices seen (who offfered, when, where, price, ever sell? may all e relevant details.

This has been a long-requested feature so it is welcome to see that the "two weeks" have finally passed. :)

James

I would like to support >73 MarthaJeanne: in her request.

She's not concerned—at least I think—with the display in the list view, but rather with the Edit Book page.

I, too, would like to disable one or two data fields that aren't important to me, or move them to another location.
Just as is already possible when customizing the homepage or other places (e.g., collections, profile, etc.).

>93 Keeline: I am only asking for the same thing already available for other firlds.

I understand some want to hide these fields. But see >95 birder4106:. Various people want to hide various fields. Right now you can pick which fields are shown in the blue "Your Book Information" overview. I think the answer here is to work toward allowing people to customize what fields show up on their edit page generally, not introducing account checkboxes for this and that.

>97 timspalding: I have tried adding fields to the blue "Your Book Information," but it had the unfortunate effect of turning the display into columns for some titles. I hate the column display. I want the fields to display the same way that they do in the default setup, with all of the selected fields on one line, one after the other, and not in two columns. I looked, but I could not find any way to control the column display, so I gave up and went back to the default. (If there IS a way to tell it to use only one column that I missed, please let me know.)

I would like to add some fields to the display, but I won't if I can't prevent the multi-column display. If there really is no way to control that, adding some control over number of columns would be useful.

@knerd.knitter and @conceptdawg?

FYI: isfdb.org can be used to find some price information. I had some old paperback sf books and using isbn to find them in isfdb.org fixed some missing/incomplete prices for me.

Maybe now people will stop posting “Binding weak; pages loose” in the “Review” section. Even more annoying than “Read in high school; remember nothing.”

>101 booksaplenty1949:

“Read in high school; remember nothing.” That's a review. Not one likely to help or entertain anyone, but still a review.

Condition descriptions for particular copies most definitely are not.

>102 paradoxosalpha: IMO a review must give an opinion. “Remember nothing” is a factual statement. I flag such statements as “Not a review.”

>103 booksaplenty1949: I don't know, that specific example seems to be commenting on how memorable or influential the book is. It's not a typical review, but feels not unlike the good ol' "No." review.

That said, having fewer quality/condition notes in reviews will be nice. Too bad we can't do it retroactively for inactive members.

>104 keristars: Some people feel compelled to write a “review” of every book in their library, and “remember nothing” is a frequent comment unrelated to a critical assessment.

>105 booksaplenty1949: I mean, I don't think it's a very good review, but that I could interpret it as "not memorable" is enough for it to be a legitimate review, whatever the member's reasons for writing it were.

>102 paradoxosalpha: through >106 keristars: (or so).

LT's conditions for what constitutes a review are pretty loose. I would say that the only real rule is that it apply to the work and not the copy. So, yes, the quality/condition notes are not reviews, because they apply to the copy, not the work. Neither are shelf locations, because they apply to the copy. Happily, we've had a field for the latter for a long time, and now we have one for the former as well.

At this point I shift to opinion, so you're allowed to disagree, and of course my opinion is merely mine. :-) I agree that a lot of other reviews, like the "remember nothing" review, are pretty unhelpful to others. But remember that LT allows members to write reviews for their own purposes. If they write "remember nothing," that could be a hint to the member either to re-read or not to re-read. :-) So it might be useful to the reviewer.

It's probably useless to the rest of us. The suggestion that I have made repeatedly is that there be private reviews and public reviews, but for the moment there is only one kind. So I think we have to accept that "don't remember" and "no" count as reviews.

I do wish that there were some mechanism so that I would never have to read a review of fewer than seven letters. :-)

>103 booksaplenty1949:

Do you also flag multi-sentence reviews that consist exclusively of accurate summaries regarding book contents (i.e. facts)?

As far as I am concerned, the basis of a book review is a report of reader experience of the work, and fact/opinion is a secondary consideration. Some reviews lean more toward one, some toward the other.

In this particular case, though, it seems like an opinion is being offered: i.e. "forgot it," which is as much a personal judgment as "hated it." Who would question that the latter is a (poor, minimalist) review by LT standards?

The person writing "Binding weak; pages loose” could just encode it as "Plot weak; style loose" and nobody would complain :-)

>108 paradoxosalpha: I would also flag “Napoleon invades Russia” as “not a review” of War and Peace. I think a review must state an opinion, however briefly. A summary of the contents—even if lengthier than my example— is not a review. I can see that one might construe not remembering enough about a book to defend an opinion as being in itself an opinion, although at my age that would extend to an embarrassing percentage of my library. (I recommend How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read on this subject.) The member in question apparently had a similar problem, but felt the need to include a “review” of every book s/he entered. Personally I only write a review if no one else has, or if my opinion is substantially different than the apparent consensus.

>109 bnielsen: I think such “reviews” are often those of book sellers using LT as a catalogue for potential customers.

>111 booksaplenty1949: Others may be imports where comments end up in reviews. Similar to that library that has 1000s of 6 digit numbers in their review field.

>109 bnielsen:

Er, I rather doubt that it would serve any likely purpose of a person "encoding" their condition data to conceal it as an actual review. People misusing the review field for other sorts of data are generally not doing it with the knowledge that it is work-level data, or with any concern about what potential readers of the review will think of it.

>113 paradoxosalpha: When I suggested to a member who revealed the murderer’s identity whenever s/he reviewed a mystery story that s/he might consider some kind of “Spoiler Alert” s/he admitted having no sense that other people read the reviews.

On the other hand, I have known people who had been made aware that they were getting all their reviews flagged either because they weren't reviews or because they were posting published reviews there, who just went on doing it.

>115 MarthaJeanne: I blame faulty parenting.

>116 booksaplenty1949: Parenting is not easy. There is no reliable guide, or guarantees that any particular technique will work with a particular child, and it is getting harder and harder. I'm just glad that I did it in the days before every teenager (if not younger) had a smart phone and lots of social media.

I was pleasantly surprised when the Collectors' fields showed up for some newly entered books, as I had missed this announcement. Thanks to everyone for entering the information on currency and condition standards, as well as a number of other topics.
With regard to "odd" things in Reviews, Comments, and other areas, I suspect (as some others have observed) that those fields were being used to record data in the past when the desired field didn't exist yet, and the oddities have never been moved (possibly for dormant accounts, or just because the account owner didn't have the time).

To booksaplenty1949 and MarthaJean: Very much agreed: Parenting is not easy.
I wonder how many LT clients/accounts/patrons are under the age of 30? Many of our younger generation apparently have never read (or can't read) a full-length novel, per the complaints of some teachers on the internet. That might affect the volume of titles in the LT database in the future.

BTW, in case I missed it somewhere, and the field per se entered the conversation earlier: is there any way to edit a "From Where?" location that was entered as free text? I seem to have been inconsistent with my nomenclature over the years.

And thanks to Tim and the Crew for all the work you do making LT such a pleasure to use!

>118 librisissimo:

I wonder how many LT clients/accounts/patrons are under the age of 30?

LibraryThing members are pretty old. The most popular group is 60s, followed by 50s. : https://www.librarything.com/topic/373965#8954986

>118 librisissimo: re: From where ?

Yes, it can be edited! I prefer to do it from the catalogue view. Double-tap the cell, then select Free Text from the row of 4 options, and edit/save. (It's also on the Edit Book page, just click the "change" button, then it's the same process.)

You can also change From Where? with Power Edit, so if you can get all the versions you want to modify on the same page, you can change them with a single edit.

>120 keristars: Thanks!
I tried the Power Edit function and that worked.
When last attempted, it didn't operate properly for that field.
I may have missed a bug fix since my last attempt, or I just did something wrong.
However, current success is all that matters!

>98 atozgrl: The reason it goes to columns is to save vertical space, but we added the option to have it stay in one column no matter how many fields you pick.

>122 knerd.knitter: Thank you so much! I really appreciate this change.

We met today and are going to be providing a more comprehensive way to pick and choose which fields you want to see/edit on the Edit Book page. This is better than an ever-expanding roster of "turn this off!" checkboxes on your account page.

>124 timspalding: Wonderful!

>125 MarthaJeanne:

We're going to get some pushback--people saying that if they don't want field X in their edit, they don't want it visible ANYWHERE, etc. So we'll see.

>126 timspalding: A lot of things already don't show up various places if they are empty. This also upsets some people.

Everything upsets some people, you will never win, but you already know that. Happily though, my pitchfork is gathering dust as many of the changes are welcome or at least benign. Have at it!

I’m coming to this discussion late but ideally Condition would be two fields: the free-text that’s there now, and a controlled list that maps to some established print grading standard (or even just a list of condition names).

I am a BIG fan of this update! As someone whose library is mostly out of print and is partially fairly rare, I would love the option to see the "purchase price" and "value" graphs and total in the Charts and Graphs section.

Maybe this is answered somewhere else, but in that case my googling skills fail me. I've started moving my purchase prices from the comment field to the new field, but I'm having problems with books bought in a currency no longer in circulation, the Finnish mark or markka.

I've tried entering the values in different formats, FIM 10,00 / 10,00 FIM / 10,00 mk, but in all of the cases LT parses the value in euros, which is my default currency. This makes the purchase price about six times higher than in reality, if using the "original" conversion rate. Am I doing something wrong or are old currencies not supported by LT? And if the latter, are there any plans to add support for them?

>131 albval: I'd suggest just converting them to Euros, but yes, it would be nice to be able to keep the FIM since the books were bought in markka.
I have the similar thoughts about some of my older English books with prices given as 2 / 6 or 2'6 or weird combinations of newpence and old shillings :-)

>132 bnielsen: Yes, I also thought about just converting them, but then decided against it. The conversion rate would be wildly inaccurate for older purchases, conversion would take a lot of time and, as you said, I'd like to keep the FIM.

I understand that LT can't convert the prices to euros, since the right conversion rate can't be determined. I guess I'd just like to have the currency recocnized correctly so that the 6-fold prices won't mess up the graphs or my autistic perfectionism :D

>133 albval: Maybe the euro / markka rate was somewhat stable? So you could convert to euro in a fair way?

>134 bnielsen: The only conversion rate between them was fixed at €1 = 5.94573 mk. But if you do that for two currencies, you've got the problem that they weren't equal historically. If you go back to the late 1800s, the Latin Monetary Union set a standard that the French, Italians, Swiss and Finnish, among others, held to, so one French franc coin equaled one Italian lira coin equaled one Finnish markka coin, all of which contained the same amount and purity of gold. But the Italian lira (which had continuity back to those 19th century coins, as does the markka) was worth 1 € = Lit 1,936.27 upon conversion to the Euro. So if you convert everything to Euro, not only would you need to know when something was printed to make sense of the price, but you'd also need to know in what currency.

>135 prosfilaes: I agree. But I think we need to know when something was printed to make sense of the price also for some of the other currencies, i.e. the English pound where I have a lot of paperbacks back to the 1960'ies with prices like 2'6. But converting to euros for a time before the euro was defined is a bit spooky :-)
Maybe we should define a special LT currency valid for all times and automatically inflation adjusted. I just tried entering 100.00 TIM as a price, but that parses as 100.00 DKK for me. Maybe comparing prices just based on the currency makes little sense to begin with?

On a more practical note I think we should just input what's printed on the book or maybe converted to something that makes sort of sense. I.e. I'll input 0.13 GBP rather than 2'6. The problem with trying to adjust prices based on inflation is that it is probably a fair assumption that all my paperbacks cost about "one inflation adjusted price of a paperback", so I might as well just count the books?

Leading back to the question about what good having the List Price does us? Maybe it's just a fun way of taking a look at all the books on ones shelves again?

Sure, most paperbacks are worth the same with inflation, but rare books, textbooks, first editions, signed editions, etc. are all likely worth a completely different amount than 'one inflation adjusted price of a paperback'. Hell, I've known some used bookstores that had free bins for the ones they had trouble getting anyone to pay anything at all for.

Textbooks ... I've paid some absolutely stupid prices for paperback textbooks, some of which of distinctly poor quality compared to your typical paperback novel never intended to be read more than once. The wonders of having a captive audience.

>138 AndreasJ: I have some of those textbooks too. 5% off the price of a properly glued version and with a notice about how the publisher was glad to be able to offer it for a much cheaper price than normal :-(

>131 albval: I'm sorry; I'm afraid that's not a currency that we have in our system.

Are Canadian dollars in the system?

>141 booksaplenty1949: Are Canadian dollars in the system?

Yes, you have to enter "CAD" after the amount.

>142 knerd.knitter: Thank you.

>140 knerd.knitter: Thank you for the info. Would it be possible to add it without too much trouble? I would like very much to see in which currency I've bought a book and how much I've paid for it at the time, without LT parsing the currency incorrectly.

It's okay for me If the FIM prices don't show up on all of the charts and graphs. And like many have commented, conversion (in general) is a huge can of worms, and also something that I have no need for. I can make accurate enough back of the envelope -calculations in my head, if needed. Thanks!

>144 albval: I'm sorry; it is not a simple thing to add a new currency.

>145 knerd.knitter: No worries, that's understandable. Having a dedicated field for prices is already a lot!

Thank you for adding this collector fields! Condition needs to be a '(more space)' field (like Title, Publisher, Comments, etc.) though to be useful to serious collectors. Accurately describing the condition of rare and valuable texts can take paragraphs to do properly.
Cheers!

>147 dripp: That is a good point. I will see about changing it.

>147 dripp: Changed.

It's possible to sort on the new price fields by clicking on the column, but could the fields be considered for addition into the 'Edit sort order' menu too? (the popup menu accessed via the button in the top bar, where Sort and Subsort can be chosen). I think it would be useful to do for example primary sort by List price, secondary sort by Purchase price, etc.

>149 knerd.knitter: Wow, thanks very much! I'm really impressed that you responded so quickly with this change. This immediately makes Library Thing and TinyCat a more viable cataloging option for rare book collectors like myself.
Cheers! --dave

>150 Nevov: You should be able to do that by clicking on the Purchase price column first and the List price column second

>152 jjwilson61: Thanks very much, I forgot about that way to do it.

>145 knerd.knitter:
I understand that, so there won't be any new currencies in a meantime?
I have almost all my library in Ukrainian currency, and it's too much work to not only move the prices from "private comments" to "purchase price", but also to convert them all one by one, even though I really wanted a dedicated "price" field for a long time.

>154 Deil: No, there is no plan to add more currencies.

>43 waltzmn: My science fiction library, which has as many or more volumes, is so useless that I haven't even bothered cataloging most of it.

As you can maybe tell, I've been slow getting through this thread, but your comment here surprises me. In my (limited?) experience, even a well-worn book club edition can have had sometimes considerable value in second-hand bookshops; I can only imagine what prices corresponding, original, retail editions in good shape might bring. Or is your science fiction library strictly of a pulp variety, with no lasting value beyond an entertaining first read?

>49 MarthaJeanne: A good rule of thumb is that any high price you find online for an old book is the price that nobody is willing to pay.

Touché!

>88 GandalfTheGreen: Seems to me, if you take the cheaper copy off the market, then its singular, contemporary, retail value might more nearly approximate that of any more expense copies.

>156 jasbro: In my (limited?) experience, even a well-worn book club edition can have had sometimes considerable value in second-hand bookshops; I can only imagine what prices corresponding, original, retail editions in good shape might bring. Or is your science fiction library strictly of a pulp variety, with no lasting value beyond an entertaining first read?

The only true pulps I have are a handful of old SF magazines -- pre-1940 issues of Amazing Stories, e.g. Those have value and are catalogued.

But my tastes tend toward genre SF, and generally toward hard SF within the genre, and more old books than new. Not many first editions. No Star Trek or Star Wars books; more Asimov/Clarke/Heinlein. Also Le Guin, Niven, and Zelazny (admittedly he's hardly a writer of hard SF). The Heinleins, e.g., are in not-so-great shape simply because all mass market books of that era are pretty tired. I just checked, in response to what you said, the used prices for my book club edition of Asimov's The Foundation Trilogy. About $10. So I'd probably get $2 for it. I could probably sell the whole collection for a few thousand dollars, but individually the books are neither rare nor valuable.

And I'm not sure I'd want to expose the world to more copies of most of what Robert A. Heinlein wrote after 1959, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress being the honorable-but-rare exception. :-)