Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot
I guess I am not seeing the advantage of paper for things like research journals. I used to write papers this way back in the stone ages of 1996  And you had to use an electronic search engine to find relevant articles (we had progressed that far, at least) and then record a call number, go rooting through the stacks to find the bound journal area and that title, and that call number etc. And then if someone had beat you to it, oh well (and this was common in undergraduate classes where we all had the same assignments and same pool of books to choose from). I think it would be much better to have it all in a big electronic database, with a site license for the school. I could do my search and read all the articles on the spot. I would still have to do the learning, the reading, the analyzing etc. I am just not seeing why I should remain so attached to the paper in such a case and why it would somehow be a superior experience. |
I use digital versions of journals to write my papers now, and it's
much easier than it was before I had access to them. I appreciate the aesthetics argument, but for certain categories of references, I really do think electronic versions work better.