ART (Aesthetically Rejected Thing): ScoutPal

Abe returned this afternoon from the Seattle public library sale with a carload of general stock and a loud and articulate diatribe about the ScoutPal, an "aid" to book scouting in much the same way that the Segway is an "aid" to walking. In both cases, the overbearing use of technology solves a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

ScoutPal, which I've seen on-line but never in the field, is a proprietory service that you log into on your Web-enabled cell phone, which tells you the selling price of used books on Amazon. So, if you're a dumb book scout, who doesn't know your trade, or just terminally lazy, you can stand at the library sale or the thrift store, punching ISBNs into your phone's keypad till your fingers cramp up.

ScoutPal now has a -- wait for it -- barcode scanning attachment that plugs into the end of your cellphone. Thus the goofy spectacle Abe described to me, of husband and wife teams grazing shelves of books like cattle, one partner turning books barcode-side up while the other partner zaps the book with their Scoutpal, like the checker-and-bagboy teams at the Super Valu down the street.

Here, as elsewhere in culture, technology and money enable a superficial amount of knowledge to be nominally "democratized," at the cost of the would-be scout's close examination of each book.

You learn a lot from handling individual volumes. When I worked at Book and Comic Emporium in the early 90s, I was always amazed by the way that Gavin, my friend and the store's manager, could accurately price books by picking them up and riffling through them. It was as if he was absorbing the book's specifics through his fingertips. I always thought this was an act put on to show me up as the amateur bookman I so obviously was, but lately, having caught myself doing the same thing unconsciously, usually in front of friends' bookshelves, I can only conclude that analysis-and-pricing by touch is a symptom of having spent serious time on the job, just as the practitioner of any trade, whether carpenter, plumber, mason or gardener, will eventually develop little job-related physical quirks.

The speed a professional bookman develops after years of handling books for eight to ten hours a day drives Internet and ebay sellers nuts. Case in point: the Reno public library sale in May. Confronted with several tables of science fiction pocket books, I started in, making piles. An Internet seller was studying me, his face getting redder and redder as he watched. Once I'd built a comfortable lead, I slowed down and watched how he went about choosing books. He'd pick a volume up and squint at it, turn it over and squint at the barcode, then maybe open it up and glance at the publication data. Then he'd pause for a secondwhile he thought it over, then move on to the next book. . . .In the meantime, I had cleared the science fiction section and was loading up my shopping cart. My competitor's face was beet-red; he looked like he was deciding to swing on me. He suspected a trick, or magic, or a technological shortcut, like an invisible ScoutPal.

No such thing exists, or ever will. In bookselling, as in most trades, hard work counts. Work out for fifteen minutes a day, and, in a year, you'll have muscles. Handle books ten hours a day for five years straight, and your very own invisible ScoutPal will appear -- in your fingertips, where it belongs.

- posted by cjb @ 9:08 PM