The Advantage of Offline Source

Sharif smiled hesitantly. “In all honesty, I was as surprised as you about that. Professor Gu and I were talking freely when he arrived on campus. He got rather quiet as we came down the slope from your Warschawski Hall. And then for no apparent reason, he turned left and we went around the north side of the library. The next thing I knew he was walking into the freight entrance—and I lost contact. I don’t know what more I can say. My own wearable security is of the highest order, of course. Um.” He hestitated a moment and then changed topic. “Aren’t you taking this whole thing in the wrong way? I mean, the Librareome Project will open up all past literature to everyone—and faster than any other project could do it. What is wrong with that?” This last was met with total silence. Winston Blount smiled thinly. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen our website?” “Ah, not as yet.” He paused and his eyes seemed to be looking far away. “Okay, I see what you’re saying.” He smiled. “I suppose I should be on your side—what you want will keep my 411 job safe! See here, I love the old poets, but old-time literature is so hard to get at. If your interest is in post-2000 topics, critical sources are everywhere and research gets results. But for the rest, you have to search through that.” Sharif waved at the orderly ranks of books, the stacks that filled the library’s sixth floor. “It can take days to gain even trivial insights.” Lazy bum, thought Robert, and wondered at Sharif’s earlier enthusiasm for “real books.” But he had noticed the trend even in his own teaching days. It wasn’t just the students who refused to get their hands dirty. Even so-called researchers ignored the universe of things that weren’t online. Winnie glowered at the young man. “Mr. Sharif, you don’t understand the purpose of the stacks. You don’t go into the stacks expecting the precise answer to your burning-question-of-the-moment. It doesn’t work that way. In all the thousands of times that I’ve gone hunting in the stacks, I’ve seldom found exactly what I was looking for. You know what I did find? I found the books on close-by topics. I found answers to questions that I had never thought to ask. Those answers took me in new directions and were almost always more valuable than whatever I originally had in mind.” He glanced at Rivera. “Isn’t that so, Carlos?”

An interesting critique on the bias of the Internet in how it brings you exactly what you are looking for, while the paper-books only brought you approximations, challenging you.