User:Jaak

I was christened Jaak in '56 and go by it with pride. I live in Belgium, and have a fairly huge library at home. The hobby of collecting (and reading them) was inactive, sort of, for almost 14 years. Couple years ago, though, while trying to figure out what I needed to fill the missing pieces to about 9,800 largely 'neglected' books or titles, I got back to collecting. I started to use public information as found at isbd and other sites, so as to not have too many doubles bought for the wrong reason. Back then, I used Tuck (3 vols), Nichols (1st and revised), Grant Thiessen's collector, Brad Day and Davis Day, and Contento (full series up till 94).

That may paint me as a serious collector. I had contributed data to Stephenson's (I had many of those.. Tossed them out I am NOW sorry to admit) I also no longer used Contento hard copy, and offered they be given to a moderator at this site for the cost of shipping. I got a reaction to this, and the contento books have a new home now.

That aside, what it amounts to, is this. Every time I look up a publication I have no information on, and find no detail here nor yonder on www, I stand a chance of buying a reprint of something I already had. Hence, I started to give back to a site that gave.

Just like I did in that other hobby I had. "help us help you" was my battlecry 'byline' under my avatar in many computer forae. Well, think about it. I have undocumented books in the genre (e.g. I know it is a collection, but the stories it contains are not here, yet..) it takes me time to get the info out off the book, and later on I can paste it into my personal database/excell app. (and, by the way, that means less work... If I enter it in my data, it don't have the extra fields correctly assessed.) Blame it on my Flemishness.