Mann: The Differences Between Real and Virtual Libraries

I enjoyed this chapter; I found a lot to agree and disagree with. It's almost uncharitable for me to disagree, though, since the arguments were made eight years ago, and some of them have been undercut in the intervening years.

• Quality control via publishers and editors is generally a good thing, but it also perpetuates orthodoxy: a virtual library's quality of ideas is far less consistent than a print library's, but it's more diverse.
• Cataloging is a good thing in some ways, but as we've read it's also a restrictive act.
• And as we've read, copyright really has become a problem.

Even so, I agree that paper's a much better medium for deep reading, and I appreciated the idea of who, what, and where limitations. And eight years later the Internet is still an unimaginably broad and generally shallow information lake, a lake with a horrific amount of junk floating around in it. The content is deepening in places thanks to broader net-based publication and projects like Google Books, though. While the virtual library will never approach the Library of Congress in scope, it provides an wonderful supplement to the typical community's library.