I had to be in Leiden for a social event this week, so decided to go a little earlier and visit as many of the bookshops in the city centre as I could manage. Three of them this time, all on the city’s High Street (Breestraat). The first, Kooyker, used to be the academic bookshop to go to for prescribed textbooks when I was an undergraduate, until another bookshop (now no longer there) took over this role. Disappointingly, their language section contained only dictionaries.

“We don’t have that kind of book anymore,” when the manager asked what I was looking for, and I told her: usage guides and manuals like that. “There is no demand for them any more.”

The next bookshop. Mayflower, just opposite, did have a language section. It contained a mixture of new and second-hand books, the manager there told me, more forthcoming than the one I consulted before.

Two copies of the Groene boekje at least, the official Dutch spelling guide (but not a usage guide as such, since by our definition such publications should not merely deal with spelling). And otherwise a kind of hotchpotch of books on language. Interesting and definitely appealing, but perhaps not the best place to lookg for usage guides.

Which I did find in the third bookshop I visited, De Slegte, a housefold name in this country for a good collection of second hand books as well as of new books remaindered at greatly reduced prices. It proved to have a great collection of books on language, including some usage guides!

So yes, there is a Fowler! Any more usage guides you spotted? I used to find many titles there over the years when we were collecting books for the HUGE database we were compiling, and there seems to be no end of them entering the second-hand market. But … the second-hand market is not really what I’m interested in for my Linguistic Landscaping in Bookshops project. I’m interested in finding out what bookshops want to bring to the attention of potential buyers today, as indeed in Donner in Rotterdam or the ones I visited for my pilot search.

So gradually the focus of this new project becomes clearer! Do send me your findings! They will add to a wonderful (in my view) and promising new project for which crowd sourcing is indispensable. I can’t do this on my own.