
In the Memory Ward: The Warburg is Britain’s most eccentric and original library - benbreen
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/16/in-the-memory-ward
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benbreen
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.

~~~
salgernon
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.)

~~~
GFischer
You do get quite a bit of serendipity through following hyperlinks though :) .

~~~
Freak_NL
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.

