The main problem facing people, especially beginners, is discovering what books exist. For example, most of us know of “Revolution in Time” by David Landes. But at some time in the past, when we knew less, we had never heard of this book.

There are thousands of books, pamphlets and offprint articles (articles which have been printed separately from the journals in which they first appeared). And new items are being added every year. Regularly I accidentally come across a book I have never heard of.

So the first problem we face is: If you don’t know a book exists how can you find it?

The main way to discover books is to read through a list of books looking for titles that might be interesting. Of course, if you have access to a major library (such as the NAWCC and Clockmakers Company libraries) then browsing through the shelves is an excellent way. Also, talking to people about what they have read and can recommend is a useful shortcut to finding some books.

There are three main sources of lists of books: bibliographies, booksellers’ catalogues and internet book sites.

There are five important bibliographies which are (in alphabetical order):

1. Baillie Clocks and watches, an historical bibliography. This bibliography covers early books published from 1364 to 1799 and lists them in order of the date of publication.
2. Kirk Books, Magazines, and Pamphlets (A Bibliography). This online list presents books in order of title; it can be accessed here
3. Robertson The evolution of clockwork with a special section on the clocks of Japan. Despite the title, the book ends with a 60 page bibliography in order of author to about 1930.
4. Tardy General bibliography of time measurement. This lists about 5,000 books in order of author and goes to about 1950. It includes some articles from journals and magazines.
5. Watkins Mechanical watches, an annotated bibliography of publications since 1800. This lists about 2,200 books in order of author and goes to about 2004. It only covers watches and marine chronometers and does not include books on clocks, sundials, etc. It can be downloaded here.
   

Another important bibliography is Bibliographia Horologiae Mundi which has more than 10,000 entries. However, at present the complete contents of this online bibliography cannot be listed (it can only be searched for either specific books, or with the advanced search function (which requires a password issued on demand from the site administrators) it can find all books dealing with a specific area) and so it can only be used to a limited degree to discover books. It can be accessed by clicking here

There are several specialist horological booksellers who produce catalogues, either printed or online. And these catalogues can be read to discover books. The following list includes some of these booksellers:

1. Formby (UK)
2. Gottschalk (Germany)
3. Hadfield (UK)
4. Rogers Turner (UK and France). Rogers Turner do not have their own web site. Addresses for all??
5. Shenton (UK)
6. Simonin (Switzerland)
7. And ....??
   

Formby, Hadfield and Rogers Turner list their books on AbeBooks (see below).

The are a number of internet book sites which sell books. Although these are normally used to find and buy specific books they can be used to list and so discover books.

1. AbeBooks (advanced search). Independent booksellers, including most of those listed above, list the books they have for on AbeBooks (and other such sites). So AbeBooks collects together very large numbers of books and provides a very good way to discover interesting books.
   If the search fields are blank but the word horology is entered in the Keywords field then AbeBooks will produce a list of about 5,000 books (depending on the day you do it).
   Such a long list cannot be scanned to the end and most people will only look at the first few hundred entries. However, AbeBooks allows the list to be sorted in a number of ways, including author, title, price and newest. The best way to discover books is to sort the list by newest; that is, by the date on which booksellers add books. This gives a random list of books that can be read to find interesting titles. You can use different key words depending on your interests.
   Searching using the keyword clocks produces a list of about 70,000 books! But many of these will be children’s and other irrelevant books.
   Another interesting way to list books is to have them sorted by price with the highest first.
2. Antiqbook. This is basically the same as AbeBooks; a search for the key word horology produced a list of about 1,100 books.
3. Biblio. Again this is basically the same as AbeBooks; a search for the key word horology produced a list of about 2,300 books.
4. Biblion. This is basically the same as AbeBooks; a search for the key word horology produced a list of about 400 books and clocks produced a list of about 400 books.
5. Choosebooks. A search for the key word horology produced a list of about 780 books and clocks produced a list of about 6,000 books.
6. Livre rare book. This is a French site, but it is not as useful; a search for the key word horology produced a list of 420 books, and montres (watches) produced 340 books.
   

From this it is apparent that AbeBooks produces the most titles and so gives you more chance of discovering interesting books.
Of course you can refine your search by using more specific key words, such as watchmaking or clockmaking. But some searches, such as tower clock and sun dial produce many irrelevant books (such as those printed by the publishing company Sun Dial). However, AbeBooks allows boolean searches and a search like sun dial AND horology will produce relevant books; but these searches cannot be too precise because then useful books may not be listed.

Discovering a book exists is only part of the problem. Now you have the name of an author and a title the next thing you want to know is: Is it worth reading? In reality, of the many thousands of books that might be interesting most are average quality. A small number are very bad and a small number are excellent. So how can you find out which books are worth having?

What is really important about any book is the content and ANY REFERENCE MATERIAL that might prove valuable at a later date.

The first problem is that many books have more than one edition. It seems the word edition can mean almost anything.
At one extreme an edition can be virtually identical to another edition of the same book. For example, Reid A treatise on clock and watch making was produced in 7 editions between 1826 and 1859 and there was a separate American edition in 1832. However, all editions have identical content except for one insignificant paragraph. So from the point of view of reading this book any edition will do.
In contrast Britten Old clocks and watches and their makers has been produced in 10 editions each with significantly different content (and even different authors!). In this case it is very important to get and read the right edition.

It is very difficult to find out if a particular book is worth reading. Nearly all bibliographies, catalogues and internet book sites do little more than list the author and title, and they do not describe the contents of books let alone quality, both being necessary information for making this vital decision. In addition, book titles are often vague and sometimes a book will include information that has little or nothing to do with the title.

There are three ways to find out about the relevance and quality of a book:

1. Book reviews. Book reviews provide information about content and some indication of quality, although reviewers tend to avoid being too critical.
   Finding reviews can be difficult. They usually appear in journals and you may not have access to back issues so that you can read them.
   Another source for reviews is the NAWCC message board and some other message boards.
2. Bibliographies. Two bibliographies provide information about the contents of many books and also include reviews. These are Baillie Clocks and watches, an historical bibliography and Watkins Mechanical watches, an annotated bibliography of publications since 1800.
   In addition, some Bibliographia Horologiae Mundientries have additional information.
3. Internet searches. Use Google or another internet search engine to find information. Supplying the author and title will produce links to sites, many of which have copies for sale but sometimes one will provide help.
4. Opinions of people. If you cannot find anything about a book, ask on a message board.
   

All these sources provide you with personal opinions and different people will have different opinions of the one book. However, they will usually provide good guidance.

Up to now this article has discussed how to find books on particular topic areas. Occasionally you will find precise information, but usually you will only learn the general focus of a book and have no idea of what it covers in detail. But sometimes you will be looking for specific information. For example, if you want to learn about the methods of early American clockmaking, where do you look? As it happens Donald Hoke Ingenious Yankees has a long and very interesting chapter on the topic, but you would not realise that from the title. Indeed, it would be unlikely that you would discover this book unless someone mentioned it.

The more precise your interest the harder it becomes to find appropriate books. For example, there is no easy way to find a book which explains how to make a hook for a fusee chain. One bibliography, Watkins Mechanical watches, an annotated bibliography of publications since 1800, does have a contents index which provides quite detailed information about what is in books, but it only covers some 700 books. In general, using an internet search engine, such as Google, or a message board is often a better way of locating such information.

The important point is that there is an element of luck in getting a book, because nearly always the only way to find out what is in it is to read it.

If you have decided to read a particular book, how do you get a copy?

Book prices are sometimes quite irrational and there is a real danger that you will pay far too much for a book. So it is essential to shop around before committing to any particular copy.

To illustrate this point here are prices for 2 common and one uncommon book:

Sobel Longitude: One search reported 713 titles ranging in price from $0.75 to $253.00. Another search reported 880 titles ranging in price from $0.01 to $253.00.
Two points should be noted:

1. There are many fewer actual copies of the book for sale. Booksellers usually list their books on a number of internet book sites, but these searches find most or all of the listings. So the number of titles reported is too high.
2. The second search found more titles because it includes new books and books on ebay (and maybe other non-book sites). The first search only checked second-hand book sites.
   

Landes Revolution in Time. The searches returned 405 titles, ranging from $1.00 to $169, and 509 titles, ranging from $0.25 to $500.
There are two editions in 1983 and 2000, and the second edition contains some important additions. In this case it matters which edition you buy. A search adding the key word 2000 produced only 6 titles (from $13.45 to $169.38), but a search adding the key word revised produced 13 titles. So the choice of key words to refine searches is important.

Gould The Marine Chronometer The first search returned 11 titles, ranging from $283 to $1070, but there were actually only 7 copies for sale. The second search returned 10 titles, ranging from $283 to $1768.
This book is best described as uncommon. Only a small number of copies are available, but you can always get one if you are willing to pay for it.
You need to think when you search. Both searches returned copies for around $80, and 7 of these gave the publication date as 2005. Very tempting. However, these offerings are for a book that has not yet been published! A reprint has been considered for a number of years, but is has never actually appeared. At present the due date is December 2009, but if it will actually appear is unknown.

Ignoring the irrationally high prices, the cost of books might be considered to be related to availability; the more copies the lower the price. But this is not a good guide. Hoke Ingenious Yankees is, I believe, an important book and there were only 16 titles listed (about 11 copies) when I searched for it; only a few more than in the case of Gould. And yet the prices ranged from $29.29 to $81.27, about one tenth of the prices for Gould.
Demand is probably not a significant factor, provided there are at least a few more copies around than there are buyers, which seems to be the case most of the time. Of course, if there is only one copy and two potential buyers, then prices will be unpredictably high. One rare book I bought for $395.00 sold at auction for $7,775; there were at least two bidders whose lust for the (apparently) only copy was matched by their bank accounts.

Reference book terms http://www.aba.org.uk/bulletin/termsof.htm#4 Antiquarian Booksellers Association

There is no doubt that the best way to buy a book is to use one of the following web sites:

1. AddAll AddAll searches 22 different book sites. You supply author and title (and/or other information) and AddAll with return a list of titles found on all the 22 sites. AddAll is not designed to handle general searches. For example searching on the key word horology returns less than 200 titles, but AbeBooks (which AddAll searches for you) finds about 5,000 titles with this key word. So key words should only be used to limit searches, as in the case of Landes Revolution in Time mentioned above.
2. BookfinderBookfinder does the same thing, and it searches a few more sites. Again key words should only be used to limit searches.
   

In both cases search results should be ordered by price.
Which site you use is a matter of personal choice. There are some differences in search options and, of course, some differences in which sites are searched on your behalf. I prefer AddAll, but that may only because I have used it more.

Some books are available as free downloads from private and public web sites. Other than modern, privately published e-books, most of these are digitised copies of old books which are both out-of-print and out of copyright.

The main source is Google Books. The Google Books site can be used to find information about any book, although in the majority of cases only author, title, publisher, date of publication and number of pages is provided. However, some books have full views where the entire book can be downloaded for free. Unfortunately in some cases the illustrations on plates have not been digitised successfully and those books are of little value.

Some of the available free books can be found in Digitized books related to watches and watchmaking and Digitized books related to clocks and clockmaking.