The lasting indispensability of printed sources and books of reference

Abstract

One of the parallel sessions of the Bibliopolis Conference 'The future history of the book'(The Hague, Netherlands, 2002) was named 'Books versus hypermedia'. In this context the casus is put forward of the printed edition of the catalogue of the 'Barchas Collection in the History of Science and Ideas' at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California (1999). Some of the things this casus teaches are (1) that a book, 'even' a science book, can be much more than just edited information, and (2) that this catalogue and millions of other books are kept in a brand new brick and mortar library, built after the last Bay Area earthquake of 1989.