Margaret Atwood and, to a lesser extent, Kazuo Ishiguro regret the loss of the book browsing experience in How internet booksellers are killing art of browsing from the TimesOnLine. Finding unexpected treats, flap reading, rubbing your fingers over those lovely new paperback covers (I added the last item) are all lost when shopping for books on the Internet.
Take a look at the comments to this article. Kind of eye-opening.
artsJournal provided the link.
But I'd say, not lost when you go to the library. Just the other day I was looking for a book for a patron and ran across a book that I had read, liked, but forgotten about until I saw the title on the shelf. It was like getting a tiny present.
ReplyDeleteI thought of libraries while I was reading this article, too. I definitely have browsing experiences there.
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