Our website has been in desperate need of updating for a long time now, and finally I have started this process. Many of the features of this new website are similar to the old one - but just work better. I'll try to give a brief overview of these, plus some of my plans for future additions.
The 'Main Menu' lists options available to everyone. Obviously the 'Herplit Blog' link will bring you to this blog. Why a blog on a bookstore website? — I am hoping that herplit.com is more than just a bookstore website. My goal has always been to provide a service to the herpetological community. With this blog I plan to announce updates to other sections of the website, particularly the classic illustrations gallery (see below). I will also provide book reviews and comments on books, both new, used, and antiquarian. In addition, I have ended up with several plates from old books and many of these will be featured on the blog. Finally, I have two six-year-olds and I will discuss my efforts to give them an appreciation of natural history and encourage their curiosity in the world. This will be done in the context of of the book "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv — Highly recommended to anyone with young kids. In order to facilitate discussion, registered users will be able to comment on any blog posts.
The 'Select Inventory' and 'Inventory' links will open new windows for my inventories on HerplitSales.com and ABEbooks.com respectively. HerplitSales.com contains items from the Gow library and is a better place to see some of the rarebooks I have in stock as well as some of the bargain books that are available. ABEbooks lists most of my inventory, including most of the reprints and journal issues. Until I am satisfied with another shopping cart system, these two sites will be the best way to buy books online from me. Of course you are always welcome to order via email, telephone, fax or regular mail.
The 'Herplit Database' link will take you to a new bibliography program that I found for the web. Right now it seems to work okay with journal articles, but not with books or book chapters. I am working on getting this taken care of. I am also working on getting a better search engine written for the database. The old 'Herpetological Contents page' will be included in this database through links in the 'User Menu' once you are on the Herplit Database page. I will still try to provide email address links to the author for reprint requests, and in some cases I can link a website (for online publications) or to a pdf on another website. Copyright issues prevent me from creating a pdf library, but I can link to other websites with pdfs provided they hold the copyright.
'Classic Illustrations' will take you to selection of galleries. I haven't updated my old website with classic illustrations for quite a while. This new gallery makes it much easier and I hope to start adding new books to this page on a regular basis.
'Links' I have started to add links, mainly to herpetological societies, journals, and bibliographies that were linked on my contents page. However, this new links page will allow any registered user to submit links. All of these will be monitored to prevent abuse and any abusers will be blocked from creating links. I have provided several categories for links, but please let me know if you have any suggestions for additional categories. The links are also included in the website search in the upper right corner.
Below the main menu is the login form. Once you create an account, you'll have one login for the entire site. You'll also see a different user menu.
On the right side of the home page is an area to subscribe to my new additions emails. These consist of about 100 items per list of items I am adding to my inventory. The vast majority are papers/separates, but I also include books. Occasionally I offer special sales - only through these lists. This module will also allow you to unsubscribe at any time.
'Herp Happenings' is a calendar of events. At this point I have only added herpetological meetings and symposia. I have considered adding other events, but right now I don't want to start adding Expos since there are too many of them and there are other sites which list these.
'This Day in History' is mostly a trivia module. I have started to enter the dates of birth and death for some herpetologists and I plan to continue to add these as I find time. Other dates of significance will certainly be considered - just send them to me.
That pretty much sums up the website as it currently stands. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.
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