Recently when I was checking the in-print availability of some books
I wanted to order from Greece I ran across an anomaly in the online
listings of Greek BIP.
I have both these URLs bookmarked : <www.biblionet.gr> and <www.gbip.gr>
Since I was looking for titles in English (from Anagnosis, Lycabettus and
Denise Harvey) I used the <www.gbip.gr> part of the site. None of these
publishers was listed, nor were any of their titles, nor was there access by
the ISBN prefixes.
In addition I was looking for translations into Greek of books by Hemingway
G.Garcia Marquez, J.K.Rowling and others. These expected authors did not show
up at all, and neither did a range of popular mass market writers (John Grisham
Stephen King etc) that I knew had been issued by Harlenik/Bell) Again
I was using
the English language version so as not to get caught in any dumb
transliteration
mistakes.
Somewhat baffled I e-mailed EEKEBI /BIBLIONET to ask if there was some kind
of problem on the site.
It turns out that the English interface is NOT an alternative access
point to the full
Greek BIP data base (though it does list those titles where there are
bi-lingual records)
and it does not necessarily include all non-Greek (Roman A/B) authors
names, even
when they are transliterated on the Greek part of the site.
To be sure that you are looking at the total BIP listings you MUST use the Greek
data base (even if the books are published in Greece in English)
I have suggested that they might want to explain this on the entry page to
the English language part of the site, to reduce confusion in such circumstances
I also suggested that the Publisher and ISBN parts of the search form there
might conveniently be linked to the full Greek records so unwary searchers
are not led into an inadvertent dead end.
=========================
June Samaras
KALAMOS BOOKS
(For Books about Greece)
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : kalamosbooks(a)gmail.com
www.kalamosbooks.com