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All very good. I have to admit that randomly browsing the stacks, flipping through the pages, has led to many serendipitous discoveries, that otherwise might n

All very good. I have to admit that randomly browsing the stacks, flipping through the pages, has led to many serendipitous discoveries, that otherwise might not have occurred had I had to go through the trouble of requesting, waiting, and receiving books, subject to lending limits, etc. I miss doing that, actually. But at this point in my life, most public library stacks disappoint me, and the university library is an hour drive's away, though I do checkout books occasionally from it.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Shelf-browsing is a true joy, and I miss it as well. It's best supported at a quality academic library (though a local liberal arts or community college may afford its own rewards). That said, I've learned the art of bibliographic search, based on references, citations, and less formal mentions, and find that quite fruitful. There are also recommendations that turn up through some platforms (I'm partial to Z-Library's), which can be useful, though come with cautions. (Popularity is a poor proxy for either truth or value, though it lets you know what others may have read.) Learning how to fruitfully use cataloguing systems is also tremendously useful. I make heavy use of Worldcat (https://www.worldcat.org/ https://www.worldcat.org/, DDG bang search !worldcat), Google Scholar, Microsoft's academic research tool when I remember it exists, Wikipedia (I read it for the references ;-), and keyword searches on Open Library, Project Gutenberg, and LibGen. I'm finding myself relying far, far less on general web search than, say, 10--20 years ago. These aren't completely useless, but the trend is quite pronounced, over all major search engines (DDG is my default, though I'll use others on occasion).