4 ms·

I submitted this when it first came out but it didn't get much attention at the time. Today I happen to be sitting in the Warburg Library and remembered how goo

I submitted this when it first came out but it didn't get much attention at the time. Today I happen to be sitting in the Warburg Library and remembered how good this article was. For anyone on HN who happens to live in London or visit it often, and is interested in the history of science or technology - this place is incredible. It's the only open-shelf rare books library I've ever seen. What this means is that you can just browse through shelves and shelves that contain not only secondary sources (the standard types of academic texts you find in a specialist library) but also original printings of primary sources (rare, historical works, which usually require a formal request to a librarian to look at). So for instance when I browsing the section on early chemistry and alchemy, I found a German alchemical text from the 1530s just sitting there next to the 20th century stuff. It's remarkable.

arethuza 9y ago
I got a chance to wander round the Advocates Library in Edinburgh when my wife was called to the Bar (it's normally closed to the public). Walking down the stairs I noticed a rather interesting looking flag in a case on the wall - it was from the Battle of Flodden in 1513. It was just mixed in with loads of other interesting stuff...
tpeo 9y ago
I'm torn between whether this is cool or just massively irresponsible. Couldn't they just stock the shelves with fac similes and keep original editions for archival purposes?
salgernon 9y ago
This resembles how I feel about digital reference vs. hardcopy - the serendipitous accumulation of knowledge that comes from having proximity to the information you're looking for... For me, it lends to an understanding of "why" rather than "how". I might forget some bit of esoteric syntax and I can look it up and move on with my life, but if I'm flipping through a book (or books) to find the information, I might better understand why that syntax came about. (I'm struggling with a particular instance of this which is why it comes to mind right now.) Accepting answers instead of discovering them... maybe it doesn't scale anymore. (Insert get off lawn joke as necessary.)
- eadmund 9y ago
  > the serendipitous accumulation of knowledge that comes from having proximity to the information you're looking for Back in college I used to use the card catalogue (or the computer, if I had to — but the card catalogue was better for serendipity!) to look up a few books on my topic, then I'd walk to the shelves and thumb through every book on the shelf above and below the book I'd found. I'd then check out every book I thought would be relevant to my work. It turned out that this was an excellent way to research topics. Rather than assume I alone knew the words and concepts to search for, I put myself in the hands of those who had classified a bunch of books similarly — and magic happened.
  - pjscott 9y ago
    I tried this a few times in the CS sections of a university library, and it was shocking just how ephemeral most of the topics were. There were books that got VERY EXCITED about systolic arrays. There was a small but persistent geologic stratum of books from the 1990s which all had to involve XML, Xpath, XSLT, Xforms, or some other revolutionary new technology beginning with the letter X. There were books with names like "Proceedings of the 89th conference in high-performance algorithms" which would have article after article talking about yet another kind of n-ary tree that performs ever-so-slightly better than another kind on a hypothetical computer without a cache. For some bizarre reason there were some of those "learn how to click the buttons correctly in MS Access 97 in only twenty days!!" books that had been mistakenly shelved in the CS section instead of the dumpster, and had never been checked out since. And very occasionally, once in a long while, there was something that would actually continue being relevant for multiple years after its publication.
- GFischer 9y ago
  You do get quite a bit of serendipity through following hyperlinks though :) .
  - Freak_NL 9y ago
    Wikipedia does have that (pleasant) effect sometimes. I can't say I see it much elsewhere though. On HN for example, sometimes a linked article contains links to other, sometimes unrelated, articles that attract my attention, but I rarely wander off along a chain of distinct sites.
devindotcom 9y ago
How insane. I would spend days there. Are there any notable restrictions or limitations on what they keep on the shelves? (I realize I could look this up but since you have hands-on knowledge...)
- benbreen 9y ago
  There doesn't seem to be. They may have a line they don't cross in terms of the expense of the books, but they had the second edition of Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" on the shelf which I imagine auctions for well into 4 figures, so they set the bar fairly high. The oldest book I saw was from around 1520 I believe. Hard to get much older than that given that serving printed books from pre-1500 ("incunabula") are incredibly scarce.

arethuza 9y ago

I got a chance to wander round the Advocates Library in Edinburgh when my wife was called to the Bar (it's normally closed to the public). Walking down the stairs I noticed a rather interesting looking flag in a case on the wall - it was from the Battle of Flodden in 1513. It was just mixed in with loads of other interesting stuff...

tpeo 9y ago

I'm torn between whether this is cool or just massively irresponsible. Couldn't they just stock the shelves with fac similes and keep original editions for archival purposes?

salgernon 9y ago

This resembles how I feel about digital reference vs. hardcopy - the serendipitous accumulation of knowledge that comes from having proximity to the information you're looking for... For me, it lends to an understanding of "why" rather than "how". I might forget some bit of esoteric syntax and I can look it up and move on with my life, but if I'm flipping through a book (or books) to find the information, I might better understand why that syntax came about. (I'm struggling with a particular instance of this which is why it comes to mind right now.) Accepting answers instead of discovering them... maybe it doesn't scale anymore. (Insert get off lawn joke as necessary.)

eadmund 9y ago
> the serendipitous accumulation of knowledge that comes from having proximity to the information you're looking for Back in college I used to use the card catalogue (or the computer, if I had to — but the card catalogue was better for serendipity!) to look up a few books on my topic, then I'd walk to the shelves and thumb through every book on the shelf above and below the book I'd found. I'd then check out every book I thought would be relevant to my work. It turned out that this was an excellent way to research topics. Rather than assume I alone knew the words and concepts to search for, I put myself in the hands of those who had classified a bunch of books similarly — and magic happened.
- pjscott 9y ago
  I tried this a few times in the CS sections of a university library, and it was shocking just how ephemeral most of the topics were. There were books that got VERY EXCITED about systolic arrays. There was a small but persistent geologic stratum of books from the 1990s which all had to involve XML, Xpath, XSLT, Xforms, or some other revolutionary new technology beginning with the letter X. There were books with names like "Proceedings of the 89th conference in high-performance algorithms" which would have article after article talking about yet another kind of n-ary tree that performs ever-so-slightly better than another kind on a hypothetical computer without a cache. For some bizarre reason there were some of those "learn how to click the buttons correctly in MS Access 97 in only twenty days!!" books that had been mistakenly shelved in the CS section instead of the dumpster, and had never been checked out since. And very occasionally, once in a long while, there was something that would actually continue being relevant for multiple years after its publication.
GFischer 9y ago
You do get quite a bit of serendipity through following hyperlinks though :) .
- Freak_NL 9y ago
  Wikipedia does have that (pleasant) effect sometimes. I can't say I see it much elsewhere though. On HN for example, sometimes a linked article contains links to other, sometimes unrelated, articles that attract my attention, but I rarely wander off along a chain of distinct sites.

devindotcom 9y ago

How insane. I would spend days there. Are there any notable restrictions or limitations on what they keep on the shelves? (I realize I could look this up but since you have hands-on knowledge...)

benbreen 9y ago
There doesn't seem to be. They may have a line they don't cross in terms of the expense of the books, but they had the second edition of Robert Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" on the shelf which I imagine auctions for well into 4 figures, so they set the bar fairly high. The oldest book I saw was from around 1520 I believe. Hard to get much older than that given that serving printed books from pre-1500 ("incunabula") are incredibly scarce.