PORTABLE MAGIC: A HISTORY OF BOOKS AND THEIR READERS

Author: Emma Smith

The debate on whether e-books will replace physical books is a tired one. The truth is that e-books have largely tried to replicate the experience of reading physical books without being able to completely replace it. This is because the book is an object that has accumulated symbolic value throughout history, beyond and in excess of its content. They are ritualistic, talismanic, venerated, censored, burned, sweared upon, and used as props. The e-book, which privileges and dematerialises content exclusively over form, can never hope to attain the same aura and vitality of physical books.

WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS IN THE LIBRARY

Author: Michiko Aoyama

Without explicitly setting out to do so, this book shows us why A.I. can never replace librarians. Why would A.I. recommend the book How Do Worms Work? to a young man who is feeling frustrated with work? Or a book on astrology to a mother struggling to hold her life together? There is something playfully capricious and obstinately nebulous about a human librarian’s intuition in locating that perfect book which defies any digital attempt to replicate it within a predictive and predictable algorithm. We are endlessly erratic – that is why we make the best librarians and why we can never be replaced.