[PLUG-TALK] An a-ha! moment

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Keith" == Keith Lofstrom <keithl at kl-ic.com> writes:

Keith> P.S. I say all this as a lifelong newspaper reader, who has
Keith> spent hours at libraries pouring over old microfilms of
Keith> newspapers and other periodicals.  The quality and
Keith> accessability of most online information is better than that
Keith> microfilm ever was.  When somebody gets around to scanning all
Keith> that old microfilm and putting it online, so it can be indexed
Keith> and googled, then one of the few remaining reasons for keeping
Keith> printed newspapers alive will be gone.

Have you read any of Nicholson Baker? (Hey, this is plug-talk, I can
go tangential all I want!  Nah-nah-nanah-nah!)  He's a big
anti-proponent of scanning, but mostly for its second-order effects of
letting librarians (who are constantly battling a flood of new paper)
throw out the old stuff, which they've let themselves be convinced is
mouldering away.  It isn't really, and paper has survived far longer
than any of its ephemeral modern substitutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholson_Baker

I once heard (or read, I can't remember)--ooh, yes I do, it was an
Arts&Lectures talk 10 years ago at least--him tell an amusing story on
Books as Furniture, using a Pottery Barn catalog hawking furniture
(armoirs, really for televisions but ostensibly for books) and the
barely discernable book titles that appear in them.  Then following
them in an interesting thread, via Tongues of Fire, a story about a
burning church library, and the destruction of the Library of
Alexandria and the massive lossage of accumulated human learning that
represented, and the sense that we were about to perpetrate the same
thing in slow motion via the destruction of paper books.


-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com