Re: [ARSCLIST] Digitizing libraries

[Thom Pease <thompease@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here are some advantages of printed books, at least
when owned by a person (not a library), for a Friday
afternoon ala David Letterman:

TOP FIVE ADVANTAGES OF PRINTED BOOKS
1) You never have to replace it with a battery, or
worry about erasing the content.
2) You own every square inch of that book, and you can
sell or lend it to anyone you want. No insipid
licensing agreements attached (except for copyright
laws). You can mash it up (real cutting and pasting),
annotate it, add bookmarks, without having to download
one piece of software, update drivers, and search for
content using these amazing tools called tables of
contents and indexes!
3) I can lose a book and be out $x dollars, but not
lose personal data, or an expensive (at least for the
near-term) machine.
4) I can manage the "item" very well in my collection
of bookcases (which might grow to fill a house
someday).
5) If you spill something on it, you don't disable
your entire library.

TOP FIVE ADVANTAGES OF PRINTED REFERENCE BOOKS:
1) It's always available on my shelf.
2) It slows me down enough to do good research,
produce excellent citations, and synthesize
information.
3) If I can't find it on any page, I know for certain
that it's not there. 
4) It shows other people that I'm a book person. :)
5) Odd information always sounds more interesting when
you discover it randomly.

Thom Pease* (a digital librarian, but an analog
curmudgeon)
Library of Congress
Washington, DC

* Just one librarian's opinion.

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