ABSTRACT
The history of booksellers’ use of electronic technology starts in the 1960s, with the founding of the Richard Abel Company and his use of computer-assisted approval selling. Prior to the 1960s, as pointed out by Martin Warzala in his Library Trends article, “The Evolution of Approval Services,” the gathering plans ?’supporting efficient acquisitions of current library materials have their roots in blanket order plans of the late 1940s. Individual arrangements were made by large domestic public and select academic libraries with publishers and book dealers. In general,” Warzala continued, “blanket orders operate by a library requesting a publisher or dealer to supply one copy of every title of a publisher’s output or one copy of all of a publisher’s output in selected subject areas as they are published.” 1
