OT: Re: Alphabeticisation ?

[Mark Wieder]

Kay-

> OK, can we go any further OT ;-)

To bring things back a bit less OT, my point is not about libraries per se, 
although physical libraries do manifest the most obvious symptom in daily 
life. I have discovered many interesting and surprising books accidentally 
by browsing shelves in a library (or bookstore) which I would never have 
come across if I were doing a focused search. And this doesn't matter 
whether the search is by title or author or subject or whatever. The 
situation is the same as following up web links: any click can lead you into 
uncharted territory and bring you to sites or subjects you would never have 
thought of searching for, but end up in your saved bookmarks. Closed stacks 
and computerized searches are the antithesis of this phenomenon.

> access to more accurate data is readily available via the internet.

Here's one case where your wife is wrong. More timely information, yes, 
since the time to print a physical document is appallingly long. But there 
are so many Wikipidiots out there that it's well to distrust anything that 
comes in over the internet. Otherwise you'll end up buying High-quality medz 
at low prices from Nigeria.

-- 
 Mark Wieder
 mwieder at ahsoftware.net