The ever-shrinking bookshelf
For those of us with ebook readers (or personal computers), the opportunity to catch up on our reading is substantial. I’ve chosen that word with cause. Let’s look at the numbers.
Suppose you have a reader with 4GB of available storage. A practical number, based on personal observation. Now, let’s say you load that reader with your personal library, digitized, converted to epub format. Again, a practical approach to the problem. Based on the average length of a paperback book, you could easily store in excess of four thousand volumes.
Not quite a forest of trees, but the number of shelf units required is reduced to a corner in the back of the desk area. Now, let’s set out to read (or re-read) the library. At a rate of a book a week, you’ll surface in just over 75 years. Up the reading flow rate to a book a day, and you can reduce the time spent inhaling (in a virtual sense) all those words to about a decade.
Come on: other than the harried undergrad (who won’t really read for content either) who has the time to get through a book a day? Even one per week? I try, but life interferes.
Back to the digital library. Four thousand volumes, at hand, ready for your own read-a-thon. I find the idea tantalizing. And if the choice of books continues to evolve (as it will), the shelves devoted to books already read will be a thing of the past. Let libraries collect the paper copies; we’re going digital.
