Where library meets vendor: a comparison of six vendors of Russian books.

Giullian, Jon

This work has two main objectives: 1) to give a brief comparison of online interfaces for six major vendors of Russian books in order to determine their respective usefulness in the book selection process, and 2) to compare the holdings and prices of six major vendors of Russian books to discover which vendors can provide the widest range of coverage at the lowest prices. For these objectives, the criteria for comparison are monographic works, including a few monographic series, on the life and works of Leo Tolstoy. In order to be included in the checklist, monographs had to meet one of the following conditions:

1. The title clearly indicated that the monograph discusses Leo Tolstoy;

2. A discrete section within the monograph (i.e., entry in the table of contents or large section of pages indicated in the index) that discussed Leo Tolstoy;

3. An annotation of the monograph clearly showed considerable content related to Tolstoy.

The determination of relevancy proved no easy task. Since one cannot always judge a book by its title, bibliographic data, or even an annotation, the determination of relevance became subjective in certain cases, for example Basinskii's biography on Maksim Gorky several pages hence.

This study compares the online catalogs, monographic holdings, and prices for six major vendors of academic Russian books. It begins with a description of the methodology used for comparison, including a discussion of the challenges encountered during the process of searching vendors' e-catalogs: transliteration, truncation, case sensitivity, and web browser compatibility. Vendors' holdings are then compared across several categories. The data include raw scores and percentages in relation to each other and to the overall volume of holdings. The comparison provides a snapshot of monographic secondary research materials on the life and works of Leo Tolstoy currently available for purchase or recently available, since Russian monographs quickly go out of print given the publishing environment in Russia. (1) The final component relates the duplication and cost of monographs among the six vendors. The data allude to the challenges Slavic librarians face in the acquisition of Russian books.

This piece compares the online catalogs or e-catalogs, monographic holdings, and prices of six major vendors of Russian books. The Vendors include: ATC Books International (ATC), East View Information Services (EV), Esterum (Est), MIPP International (MIPP), Natasha Kozmenko Booksellers (NK), and Russian Press Service (RPS). They were selected because of their large inventories of academic Russian books and because their inventories are readily available online. The comparison provides a snapshot of scholarly monographs on the life and works of Leo Tolstoy currently available. The investigation also alludes to some of the challenges Slavic librarians face in building their respective collections.

The data for comparison consist of monographic titles on the life and works of Leo Tolstoy extracted from vendors' online catalogs or e-catalogs. Titles were compiled into a cumulative checklist. The process of compiling this checklist uncovered differences and nuances in the search functions, display options, and level of bibliographic detail available in vendors' e-catalogs. A discussion of these differences and nuances follows.

Transliteration, Truncation, Case Sensitivity, Web Browsers

Four vendors (ATC, EV, MIPP, RPS) use the Library of Congress (LC) system for transliterating Cyrillic characters into Roman or Latin script. Natasha Kozmenko employs a slightly modified version of the LC system, in which the Cyrillic character [[??]] is represented by the Roman letter [y] rather than [i] used in the LC system. (2) Esterum adopted the German transliteration system, which differs from the LC system for only a few characters (Table 1).

Although Slavic librarians should be aware of these differences, a simple way to avoid mistakes in transliteration is to search Esterum's e-catalog using Cyrillic characters. Four of the six vendors (EV, Est, MIPP, NK) support searches in Cyrillic characters. Besides the transliteration system, Esterum possesses the only search engine that does not support word truncation. The use of truncated search terms (i.e., tolst) retrieves zero results. Search engines for the five other vendors support word truncation. Only RPS's search engine is case sensitive, requiring Tolst rather than tolst.

The search process also uncovered minor glitches in compatibility between vendors' search engines and web browsers. Initially, MIPP's search function did not work in Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6; hence all queries on MIPP's e-catalog used Internet Explorer. When checked later (in April 2006), MIPP's search function worked fine in Mozilla Firefox. NK had minor problems with Mozilla Firefox 1.0.6 and Netscape 8.1. Following an initial inquiry with NK, results flash onto the screen for a brief moment only to disappear and be replaced by vertical lines in the display frame. A second click on the search button makes the results reappear. NK functions without glitches on Internet Explorer. (See Appendix 1 for a comparative summary of functionality among vendors' e-catalogs and Appendix 2 for a ranking of e-catalogs based on the data in Appendix 1.)

Availability and Accuracy

One of the major questions surrounding vendors' online catalogs concerns a vendor's ability to supply all the titles listed in its catalog. Only EV and MIPP provide definite information on current availability. Individual records in MIPP's database show the status of the book, whether "in stock" or "available to be ordered." For EV, one can assume that monographs with listed prices are available; otherwise a "see note" appears in the price field, explaining that the monograph is currently out of print, but EV will attempt to find a copy for a "nonrefundable payment of a $50.00 search fee per book. This fee will be deducted from the price of the book." (3)

The accuracy of search queries and results varies among vendors' online catalogs. In order to test for exactness, the study conducted inquiries in all six online catalogs. Queries for tolst (Table 3) were conducted in five e-catalogs (ATC, EV, MIPP, NK, and RPS) on separate dates several months apart, with the last query being completed on February 10, 2006. In all five cases, the second investigation retrieved the exact same titles plus a relatively small number of new ones. Since none of the previous titles disappeared from the results, it can be inferred that vendors added several monographs to their databases during the interval between the inquiries. For this reason, e-catalogs for ATC, EV, MIPP, NK, and RPS appear to be cumulative lists of titles added over time. (4) Only MIPP and EV show definite availability. One must either presume that ATC, NK, and RPS can supply the mono graphs listed or inquire for each individual title. (5) Practical experience shows that not all books listed can be supplied.

Esterum's online catalog seems to differ slightly from the other five. Two titles that appeared on the results of initial queries (Table 5) disappeared after a repeat of the investigation at a later date, implying that Esterum purges, or hides, from its catalog those titles no longer available. These findings indicate that Est, EV and MIPP provide the most accurate data on current availability, whereas the only way to know the availability of a book from ATC, NK, or RPS involves contacting the vendor directly.

Vendor Holdings

This section provides a comparison of vendors' holdings of Russian monographs on Tolstoy. The process of comparison involves several steps. First, search terms that would account for all monographs, or as many monographs as possible, were selected. The study analyzed the results for relevancy, and eliminated false hits--monographs not relevant to Leo Tolstoy. As mentioned earlier, determination of relevancy proves a difficult task, since one cannot always judge a book by its title, bibliographic data, or even an annotation. The determination of relevancy, demonstrated below, can at times be subjective. Pertinent monographs were compiled into a master list and sorted. The investigation then compared and analyzed the level of duplication of titles among vendors to ascertain the "monograph share" of each vendor.

The goal in searching vendors' e-catalogs remained: to retrieve the maximum number of monographs on or about Leo Tolstoy. In order to account for grammatical variations in Tolstoy's surname (tolstaia, tolstogo, tolstoi, tolstom, tolstomu, tolstoy, tolstykh, tolstym), the inquiry used a truncated form of Tolstoy's name: tolst--Romanized version; TOACT Cyrillic form. On February 10, 2006, a search for tolst and TOACT yielded the results shown in Table 2:

The results for both the Romanized tolst and the Cyrillic TOACT versions are virtually identical, except for MIPP, which showed a discrepancy of 72 hits. The Cyrillic query in MIPP's e-catalog missed 72 titles potentially relating to Tolstoy, because MIPP provided annotations only in English. The query for tolst in Esterum's e-catalog yielded zero results because its search engine does not support word truncation, (9) matching only the exact spelling of search terms. This necessitated querying Esterum's e-catalog using grammatical variations of Tolstoy's surname either in German transliteration or in Cyrillic (Table 3 opposite). Although one finds slight variations in the number of "Total hits" for both Romanized and Cyrillic search terms, the results for "Relevant hits" for both Romanized and Cyrillic queries prove identical. The case is the same for "Unique titles." Owing to duplication among titles retrieved by each inquiry, the column of "Unique titles" represents the number of items (from all queries in Esterum's e-catalog performed on February 10, 2006) that were included in the master checklist. The study anticipated that each search engine would retrieve false hits; the broader the search term, the greater the number of false hits as shown in Tables 2 and 3. The most common errors included the early twentieth-century poet and novelist A. K. Tolstoi, the modern prose writer Tatiana Tolstaia, other people with the same surname but with no direct connection to Leo Tolstoy, the publishing house "Lev Tolstoi" in Tula, and tolstaia kishka (large intestine). (10)

The investigation analyzed results from all vendors title by title to determine whether monographs fit within the parameters of the study as outlined on the first page of this article. In order for a title to be included, its bibliographic record must demonstrate that the work contains specific content on Leo Tolstoy, not just a reference to him or his works. For example, the checklist excluded the following monographic title from Esterum's results:

 Piat' vekov Raevskikh (Raevskii Sergei). Moskva: Vagrius, 2005
 [592p. ISBN 5-9697-0083-5, $16] (Semeynye khroniki)--Memuary
 S. P. Raevskogo--odnogo iz potomkov geroia voyny 1812 goda
 generala N. N. Raevskogo--rasskazyvaiut o piati pokoleniiakh
 slavnogo rossiyskogo roda, tesno sviazannogo s
 drugimi zamechatel'nymi rossiyskimi dinastiiami--Tolstymi,
 Mikhalkovymi, Golitsynymi, Obolenskimi. (11)

The annotation closely associates Raevskii with the Tolstoy dynasty, but nowhere does it indicate that the work specifically discusses Leo Tolstoy. In contrast, the next annotation clearly demonstrates significant content related to Leo Tolstoy (see italicized text):

 Gor'kii. (Pavel Basinskii) Molodaja gvardija, 2005 [451 p., ISBN:
 5-235-02850-3, $29, Series: Zhizn' zamechatel'nymh ljudej, v.
 963. Na osnovanii ranee neizvestnykh materialov i dokumentov
 avtor ne tol'ko vospolnjaet opushchennye zven'ja posovetski
 mifologizirovannoj biografii pisatelja, no takzhe predstavljaet
 Gor'kogo kak provozvestnika i sozdatelja novoj, revoljucionnoj,
 religii--religii Cheloveka, pokazyvaet ego vo vzaimootnoshenijakh
 s samymi "znakovymi" ljud'mi svoego vremeni--L'vom Tolstym,
 Ioannom Kronshtadtskim, Vladimirom Leninym, Iosifom
 Stalinym, drugimi.] (12)

Based on the annotation, Gorky's interaction with Leo Tolstoy is a noteworthy part of Basinskii s biography of Maxim Gorky. The checklist, thus, included Basinskii s monograph because it falls within the parameters established for inclusion. These examples base relevancy entirely on the content in the bibliographic records.

Bibliographic content in vendors' catalogs is a key point of divergence. Four vendors (EV, Est, MIPP, and NK) include annotations ranging from a sentence to a paragraph. The comments explain, in part, why the holdings for EV, MIPP, and NK remain significantly larger than the items for ATC and RPS. Inquiries in ATC and RPS do not account for monographs which have only a small component on Leo Tolstoy because results in ATC and RPS depend entirely on the title information. This may also account for the fact that Esterum offers twice as many "unique monographic titles" as ATC and RPS (Table 5c). For seminal works on Tolstoy, the annotations make little difference in the search results, but it appears most pronounced for monographs that have a small Tolstoy component. Consequently, data extracted from vendors' e-catalogs show that EV, MIPP, and NK have a clear advantage over ATC, Est, and RPS in sheer volume. Yet, how many more titles would appear in the results for ATC and RPS if their records included annotations?

In order to check the effectiveness of Russian online catalogs, the study checked the entire list of Russian vendor titles against each vendor's online catalog. The results in Table 4 confirm the hypothesis that searches for tolst did not account for all the works on Leo Tolstoy found in vendors' e-catalogs. ATC and RPS offer many more titles than could be retrieved by the inquiry, tolst, because ATC and RPS do not provide annotations in their e-catalogs. (13) Search results depend upon the level of detail in bibliographic records. Table 4 shows the original search results compared to the number of titles found when all unique monographs (compiled into the vendor title list) were checked against each vendor's e-catalog.

According to the data in Table 4, the query for tolst captured all 99 monographs on Leo Tolstoy listed in MIPP's e-catalog, making MIPP's search engine the most accurate with a 100 percent accuracy rating. Esterum's search engine followed MIPP with a 92 percent, missing only six titles that contain content on Leo Tolstoy; NK's search engine came in third with nearly 80 percent. Surprisingly, East View's search engine ranked fourth for accuracy; although it holds the top spot for sheer volume of Tolstoy-related monographs, the search engine retrieved only 61 percent or 127 of the 176 monographs found in its online catalog. The number of monographs that East View's search engine did retrieve (127) ranks still higher than any other single vendor. As expected, the search engines for ATC and RPS proved the least effective given the absence of annotations in their catalog records. Clearly, the level of accuracy depends heavily upon whether the annotations capture content on Leo Tolstoy.

The data in Table 5a show three natural breaks in the holdings of the six vendors.

East View occupies the top position, with 127 titles (42 percent of 300) listed in their electronic catalog, followed closely by Natasha Kozmenko with 121 (40 percent); MIPP International is the lone vendor in the second tier, offering nearly one-third (99) of all monographs advertised; while ATC Books International (22 percent), Esterum (21 percent), and Russian Press Service (20 percent) list approximately one-fifth of the overall volume of titles found online. One must bear in mind that these statistics and percentages represent only the number of titles retrieved through vendors' search engines. None of the six vendors offer a majority of monographs on Tolstoy with each falling well below the 50 percent mark. Consequently, any library which uses only one vendor to collect Russian vernacular materials will be at a disadvantage. For example, if a library relied solely on approval plans from East View or Natasha Kozmenko (selected because they have the largest holdings according to data in this study), then the Slavic collection at this institution would lack a significant number of monographs only offered by the other vendors. (14) It is especially important to use several vendors in building the collection if it supports the research of Tolstoy scholars and their students.

Duplicate coverage data shown in Table 5b sharpen the picture of vendor coverage on Tolstoy. Only three titles could be found in the online catalogs of all six vendors using the various queries:

 L. N. Tolstoi i SShA: Perepiska (Sost., vstup.st., komment. N.
 Velikanovoy, R. Vittakera). Moskva: IMLI RAN, 2004 [974 pp., ISBN
 59208011891].

 Lev Tolstoi i puti russkoi istorii (Gulin, Aleksandr Vadimovich).
 Moskva: IMLI RAN, 2004 [253 pp., ISBN 5920801913].

 Lev Tolstoi na vershinakh zhizni (Mardov, I. B.). Moskva: Progress-
 Traditsiia, 2003 [432 pp., ISBN 5898561826].

This represents only 1 percent of the 300 monographic titles on the checklist. Subsequent levels of duplication are also considerably low. The number of titles held by five of the vendors (13 at 4.3 percent) indicate nearly the same as the number of items held by four vendors (14 at 4.7 percent); the percentage of titles found on the lists of three vendors jumps to 10 percent or 32 items. Even though this percentage nearly doubles for titles held by only two vendors (61 at 20.3 percent), the overall level of duplication among vendors remains still quite low. Overall, of the 300 titles listed, only 123 (41 percent) are duplicated in some level, leaving 177 (59 percent) that can be obtained from only one of these six vendors. (15)

Table 5c shows the percentage of the 177 unique titles offered by only each vendor and not duplicated by another vendor. As might be expected, the top three vendors in overall holdings also offer the largest number of unique monographs: East View lists 50 titles (over 28 percent), MIPP International presents 40 (nearly 23 percent), and Natasha Kozmenko shows 37 (just shy of 21 percent). Among the remaining vendors, Esterum stands out with nearly 15 percent (26 titles), while ATC Books International and Russian Press Service each offer only 12 unique items (just under 7 percent each). A comparison of unique titles as a percentage of each vendor's own holdings shows that 41 percent of Esterum's monographs are unique to it.

The results confirm the notion widely held among Slavic bibliographers that major research libraries should utilize several vendors of Russian materials in order to provide broad coverage of subject areas. (16) This continues to be a familiar scenario to area studies librarians in general, who face the challenges of collecting materials from a wide variety of sources, whether from local book agents, established vendors, or exchange programs with Russian academic institutions. (17) Because one-vendor cannot supply an even majority of the vernacular Russian scholarship on Leo Tolstoy, Slavic bibliographers would be ill-advised to depend solely upon one vendor. Neither should bibliographers exclusively rely on approval plans, even from several vendors. Experience shows that multiple approval plans result in a large number of duplicate titles, which cannot be added to the collection due to space issues. At a time when shelving space is at a premium, many libraries have adopted "no duplicate" policies. Rather, approval plans are one component that can be used judiciously to create a customized selection strategy. There is no substitute for well-trained, experienced bibliographers who, through close contact with their faculty, customize their selection strategy to meet researchers' individual research needs. Systematic and regular comparison of vendor holdings can help Slavic librarians establish which vendors best meet their respective library's research profile.

Vendor Prices

This study derives vendor rankings, based upon prices for monographs on Tolstoy, from the average of three comparison models. The first model assigns a rank based upon the average price per monograph for all monographs listed by each vendor. The second model assigns vendor-rankings for each duplicate title, then calculates a cumulative rank score for each vendor, and finally gives a standing based upon the average of the cumulative rank score. The third model allots vendor rankings for each category of duplicates, averages them, and then assigns a new rank or average category rank based upon those averages. The standings from all three models are then equalized to generate a combined overall ranking for the six vendors.

The first model arranges vendors by average price per monograph, calculated in the following manner. The prices of all monographs available from a particular vendor were added together to create a total or sum cost; this figure was then divided by the number of monographs available from that vendor. For example, the sum cost of all monographs on Tolstoy available through East View, rounded to the nearest whole dollar, is $759 (Table 6). The sum cost ($759) was then divided by the number of monographs for which East View lists a price (43), yielding an average cost per monograph of $18. Rankings were then assigned based on the average price per monograph. In this comparison model, East View ranks fourth, whereas in subsequent comparison models East View ranks fifth (Tables 7 and 8b).

The second comparison model derives its data from prices for duplicate titles only. Here, vendors receive a rank for each individual title according to price, in which the vendor with the lowest price received the score of one (1). The rank scores for all duplicate monographs were then tallied to produce a "cumulative rank score" (Table 7 on the following page). For instance, rank scores for all duplicate monographs listed by MIPP were tallied into the Cumulative score (117). The Cumulative score score of 117 was then divided by the number of duplicate monographs from MIPP (51), yielding a "Cumulative average" of 2.29. Places were assigned based upon the Cumulative average. In this model, MIPP stands second, tied with RPS, whereas in the first comparison model (average price per monograph), MIPP stands fifth.

The third comparison model is also derived from price data for duplicate titles only. Vendors received a rank score for each separate title. In contrast to the second model, the third model first arranges duplicate titles into discrete categories based on the number of vendors that carry each monograph. For example, as shown previously, all six vendors offer only these three monographs:

 L. N. Tolstoi i SShA: Perepiska (Sost., vstup.st., komment. N.
 Velikanovoy, R. Vittakera). Moskva: IMLI RAN, 2004 [974
 pp., ISBN 592080118911.

 Lev Tolstoi i puti russkoi istorii (Gulin, Aleksandr Vadimovich).
 Moskva: IMLI RAN, 2004 [253 pp., ISBN 5920801913].

 Lev Tolstoi na vershinakh zhizni (Mardov, I. B.). Moskva:
 Progress-Traditsiia, 2003 [432 pp., ISBN 5898561826].

In this category, vendors received positions (1 to 6) based on price. Rank scores for all three titles were then totaled to produce a "Category score." In Table 8a ATC earned rank scores of 5, 5, and 2 for a total of 12 (the Six duplicate score). This score (12) was then divided by the number of monographs in this category (3) for an "average" of 4.00. (18) The study then assigned ATC the rank of 4 in the category for "Monographs listed by six vendors." (19) Each category of duplicates (Table 8b) repeats this process. Next, standings from all five categories were compiled and averaged to generate an "Average Duplicate Rank." Referring to Table 8c, ATC earned 4, 2, 5, 3, and 3 across the five categories of duplicate titles for a combined total ("All duplicates score") of 17. This total (17) was then divided by the number of duplicate categories (5) to produce an "All duplicates average" of 3.6. The study assigned rankings based upon the "All duplicates average" with ATC occupying the third position.

Of the three comparison models the Average Price Rank model remains the least reliable because it combines "unlike" items (i.e., apples, oranges, pears, peaches, kiwi, etc.) rather than identical titles (i.e., apple to apples). (20) In order to compensate for the problem of comparing unlike items (i.e., apples to oranges to pears, etc.), the investigation decided to rank vendors for each monographic title, since variations in price from one title to the next could skew the data. This type of positioning system becomes more equitable because it negates the effect of wide variance in price for different monographs. Consider the impact that one high-priced item can have on the results. In Table 6b, ATC and NK list one very expensive monograph, while EV notes two very cheap items. The study selected other titles so that each vendor would show two monographs. In this comparison, EV ranks first, MIPP second, NK third, and ATC fourth. However, when considering all the data, NK and ATC consistently rank first and third respectively; MIPP places second and fourth depending on the comparison table; and EV consistently stands at fifth. This example underscores the need for both a large corpus of data and a means to adjust for price variance. This is precisely what the ranking system intends to do. The ranking model puts each vendor on a more level playing field, making it easier to compare "unlike" items (i.e., apples to oranges to pears, etc.).

A comparison of the three models (Table 10) shows definite patterns: Natasha Kozmenko ranks first consistently, followed by Russian Press Service in the second position, and ATC Books International in third; Esterum stands at sixth. The only variation occurs between MIPP International and East View. Even though East View earns a higher rank in the Average Price Rank model, MIPP International maintains a clear advantage overall. Results for the Average Duplicate Rank model most closely resemble the findings for the Combined Rank, suggesting that the Average Duplicate Rank is the most reliable model. The Average Duplicate Rank model also has the most equitable, and the most complicated, ranking system because it compares like monographs (i.e., apples to apples).

Although the functionality of vendor online catalogs, and the entire website in general, continues to be an important part of the services that vendors provide, the chief question remains: Which vendor has the most and the best academic books at the lowest cost? As a result, this investigation bases Overall Rank upon holdings and price data only. Natasha Kozmenko tops the list, followed by East View and Russian Press Service, tied for second place; ATC Books International and MIPP International occupy the third position, while Esterum comes in fourth. What are the implications of these statistics and rankings? For the purchase of monographs, Natasha Kozmenko offers the most affordable prices. One glance at the raw price data (not included in this narrative) demonstrates that not only are NK's prices lower than the other five vendors, but far lower. (21) On the other end of the spectrum is the German company, Esterum, which maintains the highest prices from all models, and holds a much smaller inventory than its competitors. Esterum, however is not without advantage. Its detailed annotations make the German search engine more efficient than most of its Russian or American counterparts. Only MIPP has a more accurate search engine.

East View's prices tend to be higher than its competitors, but the company's large database of title listings, versatile search engine (in spite of a lower relative accuracy rating), and bibliographic details (especially the notes showing availability) stand out as invaluable tools for Slavic collection managers. Titles, current and old, that cannot be found anywhere else can often be found in East View's catalog. East View's finding service for out-of-print items can also help librarians fill collection gaps. Based on price comparison (and on the Overall Rank), ATC and MIPP have the most similar profile. According to Table 5a, they keep similar inventories (See "No. of monographs on master checklist"), and their standings in the Combined Rank (Table 10) also compare, showing only a 0.67 differential; whereas the differential among other vendors is 1.00 or more. The Overall Average Rank for ATC and MIPP stands the same at 3.50.

Conclusion

As the number of monographs published in Russia continues to rise, it becomes increasingly more difficult to achieve the same level of coverage possible in the past, especially given the reality of shrinking budgets. Tools such as selection and price models help librarians make more efficient use of their funds and should be strongly considered. However, collection development requires more than just knowledge of vendor prices and holdings. Vendor reliability continues to be an important consideration. Vendor discounts, consortia agreements, book buying trips, local book agents, and exchange programs also influence the collection development process. It is hoped that the data in this study will serve as another means to help Slavic collection managers make informed decisions as to which vendors can best meet the needs of their respective Slavic collections with respect to the overall needs of the library.

Appendix 1

Comparative Summary of Functionality among Vendor E-Catalogs

 Quick Advanced Display Sort
 Search Search results

ATC kwd Versatile 10 No

EV kwd: in Versatile 20, all Ascend or
 title, descend
 author, or by: au, ti,
 all fields yr, pgs,
 $ publ, city,
Esterum kwd Limited: 10 No
 au, ti,
 publ, ser,
 ISBN, yr

MIPP kwd Versatile 10,20,30, Ascend or
 40, 50, descend
 by: au, ti,
 acqdt, yr,
 reg,

NatKoz kwd No 10 No

RPs none Limited: all No
 au, ti,
 subj, yr,
 publ, city

 Translit Cyrillic Annot- Browsers
 ations (IE, Nsc.,
 MF)

ATC LC No No All

EV LC Allows Cyril- Eng All
 lic queries;
 displays bibl.
 data in LC
 translit.

Esterum Ger Allows Cyril- Rom All
 lic queries;
 displays bibl.
 data in Ger-
 man translit.

MIPP LC Allows Cyril- Eng All
 lic querries;
 displays bibl.
 data in Rus.,
 LC translit,
 or Eng

NatKoz LC, ex- No Rom All * (glit-
 cept [y] ches w/
 for [[??]] Nsc., MF)

RPs LC No No All

Abbreviations

$ price
acqdt acquisition date
annot annotations
asc ascending
au author
bibl bibliographic
city city of publication
desc descending
Eng English
Ger German
IE Internet Explorer
kwd keyword
MF Mozilla Firefox
Nsc. Netscape
pgs pages
ISBN Int'l Standard Book No.
LC Libraby of Congress
publ publisher
reg region
Rom Romanized Cyrillic
Rus Russian
ser serial
subj subject
ti title
translit. Transliteration
yr year published

Appendix 2

Comparative Summary of Functionality among Vendor E-Catalogs

 ATC EV Est.

Quick Search 2 1 2
Advanced Search 2 1 2
Display results 2 1 2
Sort 2 1 2
Translit 1 1 2
Cyrillic 2 1 1
Annotations 2 1 1
Browsers (IE, Net- 1 1 1
scape, MozFf.)
 Total 14 8 13
 Categories 8 8 8
 Avg 1.75 1.00 1.63
Rank 4 1 3

 MIPP NK RPS

Quick Search 2 2 3
Advanced Search 1 3 2
Display results 1 2 1
Sort 1 2 2
Translit 1 1 1
Cyrillic 1 2 2
Annotations 1 1 2
Browsers (IE, Net- 1 1 1
scape, MozFf.)
 Total 9 14 14
 Categories 8 8 8
 Avg 1.13 1.75 1.75
Rank 2 4 4

(1) See Daniel M. Pennell, "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Vicissitudes of Vendor/Library Relations in the Slavic and East European Book Trade," SEEIR 5: 1-2 (2003): 59-68.

(2) This difference is a moot point, since it had no effect on the search results.

(3) This fee is usually $50.00, but may be less depending upon the specific title. One title this author checked required only a $10.00 fee. See East View Information Services at www.eastview.com/russian/books/index.asp.

(4) Since the respective booklist or catalog numbers appear on each electronic record (for RPS and NK), it would appear that their respective e-catalogs are an electronic compilation of their regular booklists. Such "cumulative" e-catalogs provide a history of vendor holdings. For the purpose of comparing prices, it does not really matter whether the items are still available. The data show how the prices compare when the monographs were available, although in a few cases, the original prices may have dropped in order to sell off overstocked books.

(5) One advantage of RPS's print catalogs is the fact that RPS shows other volumes of multi-volume sets or series that are available. In practice, the print catalogs from RPS are much more helpful than their online catalog because of the English annotations.

(6) This author was unable to determine the reason for the discrepancy in this search result.

(7) See discussion of this result in the paragraph following the table and in n. 9.

(8) Individual volumes of multi-volume sets and monographic series are counted separately, thereby bringing the total number of monographs to 60.

(9) The query in RPS also brought back zero results until it was modified from tolst to Tolst, since RPS's e-catalog is case sensitive.

(10) The most common form which appeared was tolstoi kishki, the genitive singular of tolstaia kishka.

(11) http://www.nkbooks.ru/books/Books.nsf/catalog/7B5085D559CD913BC32570D5006 OA617?OpenDocument

(12) http://www.nkbooks.ru/books/Books.nsf/catalog/7B5085D559CD913BC32570D5006 OA617?OpenDocument

(13) RPS's e-catalog has only basic bibliographic data (author, title, publication information, price, ISBN, etc.), but their monthly print catalogs include English annotations which are a valuable resource for bibliographers.

(14) Interlibrary loan and document delivery programs help to alleviate the problem, but they cannot completely compensate for large gaps in collections. Some of the titles that would be missed include:

 Filosofiia neprotivleniia L. N. Tolstogo : sistematicheskoe
 uchenie i dukhovnyi opyt. (Meleshko, Elena Dmitrievna). Tula:
 Tulskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet,1999.

 Iasnaia Poliana puteshestvie s L'vom Tolstym (Nikitina N.). Tula,
 2004.

 L. N. Tolstoi dialog vo vremeni. Remizov (Vitalii Borisovich). Tula:
 Tulskii gosudarstvennyi pedagogicheskii universitet,1998.

 N. P. Giliarov-Platonov i K. I. Leont'ev: spory o Tolstom
 (Panaetov, O. G.). Krasnodar: Kubanskii sotsial'no-
 ekonomicheskii institut, 2002.

 O L. N. Tolstom i ego potomkakh (Murygin, G. I.) Novosibirsk , s.n.,
 1995.

 Ob effekte zhiznepodobiia Anny Kareninoi (Slivitskaia, O. V.) SPb,
 2004.

 Puti personazhei i avtorov : Tolstoi, Dostoevskii i drugie (Syrkin,
 A. IA.) Ierusalim Filobiblon, 2001

 Sokrovennyi Tolstoi: religioznye videniia i prozreniia
 khudozhestvennogo tvorchestva L'va (Nikolaevicha Berman, B. I.)
 M: Gendal'f, 1992.

 Za gran'iu nevidimogo: V tvorcheskoi laboratorii L. N. Tolstogo: of
 izobrazitel'nogo istochnika: k istoricheskomu povestvovaniiu
 (Manaev N. S.) Kaluga, 2002.

 Prorok v svoem otechestve: Pushkin, Gogol', Tolstoi: O
 nevostrebovannykh idealakh i idealakh russkikh geniev (Sushkov
 V. F.). Tula, 2003.

 Moia zhizn' doma i v iasnoi Poliane (T. A. Kuzminskaja). Jantamyj
 skaz, 2003.

As of February 10, 2006, none of these titles cold be found in either EV or NK.

(15) One must keep in mind that ATC and RPS list many more titles than the data show because their e-catalogs are not robust enough to retrieve all works on Leo Tolstoy that are listed in their respective catalogs. As a result, the number of duplicates among vendors is probably higher.

(16) The Slavic collection with the widest coverage for Tolstoy (Columbia University) holds less than 60 percent of all monographs offered by the six vendors surveyed in this study. These data come from research on Slavic collection holdings that serve as a companion to this piece and will be available in a forthcoming article.

(17) Some obscure materials can also only be obtained through book exchanges with Russian libraries or educational institutions.

(18) Since all vendors offer these three titles, the number of monographs listed is the same for all vendors in this category. The number of monographs differs among vendor for the remaining four categories.

(19) A ranking of vendors based on the average price per monograph of three titles shows that vendors fall into the same order as in the ranking scheme shown in Table 8b. The only dissimilarity is the amount of difference. Because the difference between RPS ($25.33) and MIPP ($26.00) is small, they both received the rank of 2 in this scheme. The same applies for ATC ($29.00) and East View ($29.23). both of which were assigned rank of 3: shown in Table 8b. The only dissimilarity is the amount of difference. because the difference between RPS ($25.33) and MIPP ($26.00) is small, they both received the rank of 2 in the scheme. The same applies for ATC ($29.00) and East View ($29.23), both of which were assigned the rank of 3:

Price model for monos. listed by six
vendors NK RPS MIPP

L. N. Tolstoi i SShA: Perepiska 20.00 32.00 35.00
Lev Tolstoi i puti russkoi istorii 9.00 16.00 18.00
Lev Tolstoi na vershinakh zhizni 15.00 28.00 25.00

Total cost 44.00 76.00 78.00
No. of monographs listed 03 03 03
Price per monograph 14.67 25.33 26.00

Six Duplicate Rank 01 02 02

Price model for monos. listed by six
vendors ATC Est. EV

L. N. Tolstoi i SShA: Perepiska 44.00 39.90 47.95
Lev Tolstoi i puti russkoi istorii 20.00 18.90 19.95
Lev Tolstoi na vershinakh zhizni 23.00 28.90 39.95

Total cost 87.00 87.70 97.85
No. of monographs listed 03 03 03
Price per monograph 29.00 29.23 32.62

Six Duplicate Rank 03 03 04

(20) A simple analogy demonstrates this problem. Consider the prices of fruit in six grocery carts (from six different grocery stores). Each cart contains many kinds of fruit. There is some duplication of fruits among all six carts, but each cart has a certain percentage of unique fruit not found in any of the other carts. The various fruits also range in price from very cheap to very expensive for the more exotic fruits. While person A might prefer to go to the grocery store that has the overall best prices and widest selection of all fruit combined, person B would rather go to several stores to get the best deals. Person B needs the comparison of like-fruits (i.e., apples to apples, and oranges to oranges), while person A does not.

(21) Raw data in the form of Excel files is available upon request from this author.

Table 1

Cyrillic [??] [??] [??] [??] [??]

LC i ts ia iu e

German j c ja ju eh

Table 2

Vendor Total hits for Total hits for
 Roman [tolst] Cyrillic [TEXT NOT
 REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]

ATC 134 n/a
EV 498 497 (6)
Esterum 0 (7) 0
MIPP 172 100
NatKoz 247 247
RPS 69 n/a

Vendor Hits (mono- Non relevant
 graphs) related / false hits
 to Leo Tolstoy

ATC 66 68
EV 127 371
Esterum -- --
MIPP 99 73
NatKoz 121 126
RPS 55 (60) (8) 14

Table 3

Romanized Total Relevant False Unique
Query Hits Hits Hits Titles

tolstaia 29 1 28 0

tolstogo 72 29 4 21

tolstoj 103 29 75 29

tolstom 9 9 0 6

tolstomu 1 1 0 1

tolstoy 1 0 1 0

tolstym 11 7 4 5

tolstymi 0 0 0 0

tolstkh 12 0 12 0

Total 238 76 162 62 *

Cyrillic Total Relevant False Unique
Query Hits Hits Hits Titles

[TEXT NOT 29 1 28 0
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 75 29 43 21
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 104 29 74 29
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 10 9 0 6
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 1 1 0 1
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT -- 0 1 0
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 11 7 4 5
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 0 0 0 0
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

[TEXT NOT 12 0 12 0
REPRODUCIBLE
IN ASCII]

Total 243 76 162 62 (i)

* Individual volumes of multi-volume sets and monographic
series are counted separately, bringing the total number
of monographs to 63.

Table 4

 Vendor No. of No. of Difference
 mono- mono-
 graphs graphs
 from on master
 queries checklist

ATC 66 96 27
EV 127 176 49
Est. 64 69 5
MIIPP 99 99 0
NK 121 147 25
RPS 59 92 33

 Vendor % change Accuracy Accuracy
 rating rank

ATC 45% 59% 5
EV 39% 61% 4
Est. 8% 90% 2
NIIPP 0% 100% 1
NK 21% 79% 3
RPS 56% 47% 6

The number of monographic titles from all queries (with duplicates
eliminated) is 300.

Table 5a

Vendor No. of % of Rank
 mono- Total
 graphs
 retrieved
 by queries

EV 127 42.3% 1
NK 121 40.3% 2
MIPP 99 33.0% 3
ATC 66 22.0% 4
Est 63 21.0% 5
RPS 59 20.0% 6

Vendor No. of % of Rank
 mono- Total
 graphs
 on master
 checklist

EV 176 59% 1
NK 147 49% 2
MIPP 99 33% 3
ATC 93 32% 3
Est 69 23% 4
RPS 92 31% 3

The number of monographic titles from all queries (with duplicates
eliminated) is 300.

Table 5b

 No. of
 monographs
Monographs retrieved by % of
listed by: queries Total

6 vendors 3 1.0%
5 vendors 13 4.3%
4 vendors 14 4.7%
3 vendors 32 10.7%
2 vendors 61 20.3% Total no.
 of % of
1 vendor 177 59.0% duplicates duplication

Total 300 100.0% 123 41%

Table 5c

Monographs advertised No. of monographs % of monographs
 (retrieved by que- (retrieved by que-
 ries) listed by ries) listed by
 1 vendor 1 vendor

East View 50 28.2%
Natasha Kozmenko 37 20.9%
MIPP Int'1 40 22.6%
Esterum 26 14.7%
ATC Books Int'1 12 6.8%
Russian Press Service 12 6.8%

Total 177 100.0%

Table 6

Price Comparison of Vendor Holdings:
Model 1--Average Price Rank

 NK RPS ATC

Sum cost ($) of
monog. w/ listed
prices $1,255 $973 $1,103

Number of
monographs w/
listed prices 115 60 64

Average price ($)
per monograph $11 $16 $17

Average Price

Rank 1 2 3

 MIPP EV Est.

Sum cost ($) of
monog. w/ listed
prices $1,980 $759 $1,623

Number of
monographs w/
listed prices 99 43 64

Average price ($)
per monograph $20 $18 $25

Average Price

Rank 5 4 6

Table 7

Price Comparison of Vendor Holdings:
Model 2--Cumulative Duplicate Rank

Cumulative
Duplicates NK RPS ATC

Cumulative score 79 92 118
No. of monographs
listed (per vendor) 76 40 48
Cumulative average 1.04 2.30 2.46

Cumulative Dupli 1 2 3
cate Rank

Cumulative
Duplicates MIPP EV Est.

Cumulative score 117 88 104
No. of monographs
listed (per vendor) 51 32 37
Cumulative average 2.29 2.75 2.81

Cumulative Dupli 2 4 5
cate Rank

Table 8a

Ranking model
for monos. listed
by six vendors NK RPS MIPP ATC Est. EV

L. N. Tolstoi i
SShA: Perepiska 1 2 3 5 4 6

Lev Tolstoi i puti
russkoi istorii 1 2 3 5 4 5

Lev Tolstoi na
vershinakh zhizni 1 4 3 2 5 6

Six duplicate
score 3 8 9 12 13 17

No. of mono-
graphs listed 3 3 3 3 3 3

Six duplicate
average 1.00 2.7 3.00 4.0 4.33 5.7

Six Duplicate
Rank 1 2 3 4 5 6

Table 8b
Price Comparison of Vendor Holdings:
Model 3--Average Duplicate Rank

Duplicate categories NK RPS ATC

Six duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 6
vendors) 1 2 4

Five duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 5
vendors) 1 3 2

Four duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 4
vendors) 1 4 5

Three duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 3
vendors) 1 2 3

Two duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 2
vendors) 1 2 3

All duplicates score 5 13 17

Number of duplicate
categories 5 5 5

All duplicates average 1 2.6 3.4

Average Duplicate Rank 1 2 3

Duplicate categories MIPP EV Est.

Six duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 6
vendors) 3 5 4

Five duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 5
vendors) 5 6 4

Four duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 4
vendors) 2 3 6

Three duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 3
vendors) 4 4 5

Two duplicate rank
(Monogs. listed by 2
vendors) 4 3 5

All duplicates score 18 21 24

Number of duplicate
categories 5 5 5

All duplicates average 3.6 4.2 4.8

Average Duplicate Rank 4 5 6

Table 9

Price comparison of vendor holdings:

Duplicates NK RPS ATC MIPP EV Est.

Sochineniia
F.1. Tiutcheva 50 52
Filosofiia kul'tury
L.N.Tolstogo 3 5
Khudozhestvennoe
zaveshchanie L'va
Tolstogo 3 5
Za graniu
nevidimogo 19 23
Total 53 71 26 10
Number of
Monographs 2 2 2 2
Average 26.5 35.5 13 5
Rank 3 4 2 1

Table 10

Price Comparison of Vendor Holdings:
Combined Rank (based on prices)

Combined Rank NK RPS ATC

Average Price Rank 1 2 3
Cumulative Rank 1 2 3
Average Duplicate Rank 1 2 3
Overall rank score 3 6 9
Number of comparison models 3 3 3
Overall average score 1.00 2.00 3.00
Combined Rank 1 2 3

Combined Rank MIPP EV Est.

Average Price Rank 5 4 6
Cumulative Rank 2 5 6
Average Duplicate Rank 4 5 6
Overall rank score 11 14 18
Number of comparison models 3 3 3
Overall average score 3.67 4.67 6.00
Combined Rank 4 5 6

Table 11

Overall Rank

 NK EV RPS

Holdings 2 1 4
Price 1 5 2
Overall score 3 6 6
Number of categories 2 2 2
Average 1.50 3.00 3.00
Overall Rank 1 2 2

 ATC MIPP Est.

Holdings 4 3 6
Price 3 4 6
Overall score 7 7 12
Number of categories 2 2 2
Average 3.50 3.50 6.00
Overall Rank 3 3 4