Amara Graps wrote:
> Spike Jones writes:
> > You and all of us. I have over a thousand titles, most of em
> > hardback. Ideally I would like to ASCII all the text without
> > destroying the books, if possible. Let me know if you find
>
> "without destroying the books"
I should have said "without destroying the bindings." We have
an adjustable paper feeding scanner at work, but to use that
to scan my books I would need to saw off the bindings.
> If you succeed in this effort, would you still keep the books?
Yes. I would use the ASCII files mostly for finding passages
that I remember but that do not show up in the index. I often
recall a sentence or a phrase that was part of a passage I want
to review. Consider the set of book written by Asimov over
a period of more than 30 years, his nonfiction essays. There are
24 of these, not including compilations. Very entertaining stuff,
but nearly impossible to index. So I made up a topical index
and sent it to him via email, but he was already very sick and
I never heard back.
> If I design a virtual reality of my
> home in the future, the virtual reality would have to have shelves
> of my books.
I love the *smell* of old books. Im queer that way. Used to
like to go the library as a little kid and read the oldest book
I could find, and think, WOW this person was messed up. {8^D
I fondly remember my library surfing days every time I open up an
old book and that smell comes out.
I opened up one of my college text books the other day, and
that smell came out. It was one I bought new. In college.
Now it has that smell.
I hate the smell of old books.
> I don't like reading long texts electronically. I would be tickled
> pink to have my books electronically available with which to search...
Roger that. As Eliezer so aptly stated, books give us only pictures of
information.
> I have a sense that many here have similar small libraries; are
> we so unusual to other people?
I am, but not because of my books. {8^D
> I really miss Stanford's bookstore and libraries.
Ja me too, and its just down the street. Truth is, I dont read
nearly as many books now as I did in my misspent youth. Now,
in my misspent adulthood, the internet has taken the place of a
lot of that, not just the lists, but web surfing, etc.
Before it is all over, we will see that the internet has impacted
human society even more profoundly than did the invention
of the printing press. The web age is the new Renaissance.
Furthermore it is far easier to spell. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:38:03 MDT