4 ms·
I was a student more like 20 years ago. I had a lot of physical books as well. There's different use cases. If you are searching for a specific piece of info
by RajT88 3y ago
I was a student more like 20 years ago. I had a lot of physical books as well. There's different use cases.
If you are searching for a specific piece of information - digital all the way.
If you are trying to digest material in a linear fashion, I find a physical book works better for me. Less distractions.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sidewndr46 3y agoI agree on the less distractions part. But it's just a time thing. I can search 7 different books in the time it would take me to get one off a shelf and search it.
- RheingoldRiver 3y agoI'd agree with this take. I love reading physical books to learn new subject areas. It's one of my favorite things to do period, as a hobby. Lie down in bed with a physical book & have someone tell you the most important things they learned in life, organized into chapters. For research I think it's good to use a mix. You won't get good "unknown unknowns" if all you do is search for facts. Some reading of articles and books is good.
- tzs 3y agoI've found that somewhat unexpectedly sometimes physical is faster for search. With a physical book I might remember that the equation I'm looking for was near the bottom of a series of equations on the bottom half of a left hand page, and the right hand page had a particular graph, and this was somewhere in the third quarter of the book. It is then just a matter of quickly fanning through that general region of the book to find it. With digital I can do a digital search but it is hard to find search terms that don't return a ton of hits all through the book. As I read a digital book I don't get a sense of movement through it that I get from a physical book, so I'm less likely to be able to remember how far into the book what I seek should be.