aemeijers wrote:

Go to the circulation desk and ask for the following:
* Encyclopedia Judaica
* Marquis Who's Who
* Cumulative Books In Print
* Oxford English Dictionary
* Physician's Desk Reference

Report back.


Even in a 'real' library, like at a major university, hardcopy
versions of expensive reference works are getting rare. Cheaper and
safer for them to have the DVD version on a local server, or use
their house terminals as a portal to the by-subscription secure (and
not visible to the public internet) web site.

Of course, if the power goes out, and the long haul telecom fails in
long term fashion, we're all gonna start missing the dead-tree
editions. (Even the illiterati barbarians know how to use books to
start a fire come winter.)


Yep. Electronic books are the coming thing. There's even a free, open
source, software package (Calibre) that allows you to store unlimited books
on your computer's hard drive, transfer them between your ebook reader, and
change formats so your Kindle can read a Sony download.

If you get a chance, read an old (1989) novel, "Cyberbook" by Ben Bova. It
deals with a young engineer trying to introduce an electronic book.

Actually, Cyberbook is a spoof of the book industry.

For example, Web Press (the fictious publisher) hires an efficiency expert
who demands that the company save five cents per hundredweight on the glue
used in perfect bindings (paperbacks). Unfortunately, the new glue has two
problems: (1) At temperatures greater than one hundred degrees (as in a UPS
truck), the glue decomposes, and (2) The decomposing glue not only releases
the pages it also releases an hallucinatory gas such that the hippies in
each bookstore's receiving department are compelled to rip off their clothes
and run into the selling area screaming "French people are burning me with
cigarettes!" If you've ever imagined a naked bookstore employee, you can
imagine how ghastly the situation became.

Also, again in the name of efficiency, Web Press automated their warehouse.
Robotic machines traveled the warehouse on rails picking cases of books from
the shelves. Unfortunately, due to an oversight, the robots could only reach
four shelves high, and the warehouse had five shelves. This oddity was
overcome by the simple expedient of hiring dwarves to ride atop the robots
to reach the higher shelf. This in turn generated another problem inasmuch
as the dwarves often fell off the robots and were run over...