After long theorical discussions about our aims and visions a bunch of freedom and independence loving antiquarian booksellers with online activities decided months later at the beginning of the 21st century to create a cooperative of antiquarian booksellers, the so called GIAQ (Genossenschaft der Internetantiquare : Cooperative of the antiquarian online booksellers) which should run and own a proper platform (www.prolibri.de) offering our items.
Due to our IT-mastermind Thomas Benedix we are now offering one of the best german databases and, though regarded sceptically - not only by our colleagues - but also by some of our dealers, we are very fit for the market as a democraticly ruled and commonly owned enterprise.
How quick we are was proven in the last months (June 2007 to january 2008) as we decided to cooperate with our european friends and helped in forming the structures and the creating of a database, which seems to be, now mainly due to the french team, one of the best in Europe; all this within less than 6 months.
Why do we talk about structures, visions and organisations ? Technics and so on and not about customers, as there are two kind of: first of all, you, the booklover and hunter of long searched book without whom we would have nothing to do and, the second kind of our customers, the free and independend online antiquarian bookseller, mostly a very individualized and sometimes freaky human beeing, surrounded by tons of books described for and waiting for you to come and see and order. In a certain sense we created Antiquariat.de and recently marelibri to give them, all of us, our faces back, lost in the anonymity of online trade run nowadays by the big business.
We are very happy that you found this site and had been so curious to read about us, who we are and what we want, thank you.
'Vielen Dank', a typical german expression as most of us at Antiquariat.de... are german speaking. Christoph Schaefer - Antiquariat.de