> For one thing, it takes energy to read e-texts.

It takes more energy to manufacture and ship a book.

> For another, it could be made more convenient to browse through e-texts. E-texts, as one long document on a computer, are difficult to manage in that it is hard to save your place. If you want to scroll to the end, you sometimes have to hold down on the down button for an awfully long time.

Only with older than stone age software. I am fond of UNIX's 'vi' text editor. It is ancient, and it's difficult to learn, but, once learned, can be used to process documents very fast -- much faster than modern word processors for most tasks. I can zip to any part of a file with just a couple of keystrokes (alphanumeric keystrokes, too, not ctrl/alt/meta/function/whatever combinations that require more time to type). Going from the top to the bottom is one keystroke. Going to some percent of the way down the file is two or three. Searching for a particular substring is two keystrokes plus those required to type in the substring, and moving to next or previous occurrences is one additional keystroke per step. Browsing e-texts, saving your places within them, etc, is MUCH easier and faster than doing that with a book. Books have bookmarks that can fall out and don't save the word you were on -- it only narrows it down to somewhere in one of two pages.

Not that I prefer e-texts to books. I don't. However, I rather resent Mr. Librarian Shmibrarian suggesting that I should be forced to choose. Ideally, texts should be available in both forms. When I want to read a story, I'd like to read a book, and when I want to look up something in that book, I'd like to do a near-instantaneous search on a computer.

Except for their portability, books are simply inferior for reference tasks. If I need to look something up, I'd need to *find* a book that has that information first, which may be a difficult task, and then I'd have to figure out where it addresses the issue inside, and then I'd have to read it and study it without the assurance that it actually touches on the specific points or perspectives that I was looking for in the first place. Online, you enter a few search words in a search engine to perform the first step, making it a non-issue, and the second is also arguably made easier.

The only thing lacking in looking things up online is that the information isn't all there yet, or at least not all there in easily browsable ways. The *potential* for HUGE gains is there, and IS being exploited, as it should be, but it will take a long time and a lot of effort to get to the point we should be. Mr. Librarian Idiot somehow thinks that because the Internet is currently sometimes being used for less than respectible pursuits, he should excuse himself from his part of the job in helping to CHANGE the very thing he's whining about. Presumably, based on some of his arguments, Mr. Librarian Schmuck would be more apt to pursue the task if it were already completed. Thank you, Mr. Librarian Lumpenproletarian, for living up to the responsibilities your job demands by being such a courageous leader and forging us into the territory we must seize if we are to survive in the Information Age.

I do have the reverence for books that he does. I don't, however, have his ridiculous fear of change, nor is my vision clouded by anything else so much that I can't see an obviously good thing when I see it. Keep books. Put copies online.