Great little article by Anthony Grafton, recounting the history of reading, publishing and organizing books, ending with Google and other smaller efforts to digitize books. Conclusion:

Sit in your local coffee shop, and your laptop can tell you a lot. If you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will have to take the narrower path […]

I am quite enjoying my Readers’ Advisory class this year. The professor, Juris Dilevko, author of the contrarian Readers’ Advisory Service in North American Public Libraries, 1870-2005: A History and Critical Analysis, is setting up the class as a debate between the previous (pre-1980) conception of Readers’ Advisory as the suggestion of “good” books […]

I don’t really order my bookshelves, kind of sinful for someone with my interests. While this presents problems when I am looking for a quote in the middle of writing, I enjoy looking at their mis-mashed order. I often just like to make mental connection between the works.

Now, discuss.

To: Friedrich Schiller, Sämtliche Werke, 1835, and the other German works of PT 2XXX

Dear Werke:

I am sorry I had to take you from the shelves, in all 12 volumes of beautiful cracking covers and yellowing paper. Apparently your lack of barcode signaled that no one had checked you out in almost 20 years. […]

Walking in the rain today I was amazed by some of our major biases towards the book as a vehicle of thought transmission. We give much credence to the book: an author’s thoughts are represented by his books, so much to the point that when we say “Augustine’s thought on this subject” what we […]