Selling and purchasing historical items on eBay
In the April 25 Chronicle of Higher Education’s The Chronicle Review, a coworker of mine, John Lenger, published “Pieces of History, Gone to the Highest Bidder” about the selling of books of historical or collector’s significance on eBay. (Access to the article is restricted to subscribers of The Chronicle of Higher Education, unfortunately.) John raises some excellent issues and uses good concrete examples of former library books being sold for nice sums of money in this public auction. He asks some key questions, like whether there’s a better, more organized way libraries can offer discards to other libraries that might really need them, what happens when these items are no longer available to the public, is there some way libraries could sell their discards over eBay directly and possibly get more money for the valuable ones instead of the meager amount they’d get in a book sale, and, of course, the very familiar questions of what’s worth saving and what do we do with what is saved.
For the record, John did ask for the feedback from a librarian (me) before his piece was published to see if what he was saying was coherent. I signed off on it because I think his ponderings have merit. What if the New York Times sells its historical photos over eBay?
This morning on WBUR, a public radio station in Boston, I heard their piece during National Public Radio’s Morning Edition about a professor who bought a photograph that supposedly features Emily Dickinson on eBay. There’s only one photograph that scholars agree is of Emily Dickinson and this might be the second. Professor Philip Gura is working to have the photo authenticated. Being the person he is, he said that if the photo can be authenticated, he would probably donate it to a museum or similar institution.
If the photograph actually shows Emily Dickinson, imagine what would have happened had this photo gone into someone’s personal collection again and never been seen publicly. And think about where it has been all these years that no one, except its owner, knew of its existence or historical significance. And why did its owner choose to sell it over eBay instead of bringing it to the attention of a library or museum or a Dickinson scholar? How many more historically and culturally significant items might be sold over eBay? Do people sell things over eBay because they don’t know what else to do with them? Are they not award that museums and libraries might be interested in these items? Or do they think they could get more money from someone in the general public than from a museum? Are people from museums, libraries, and other public institutions watching the sales regularly and spreading the word about important items up for auction? Is anyone watching eBay for items looted from the Iraqi museums?
I’m not campaigning against eBay, but I think these issues are important and worth exploring.
