Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
No. My eyes are wide open.
Same. Most of my childhood was spent in front of a massive set of the World Book Encyclopedia (complete with the Childcraft addons and annual supplements). I read them all from cover to cover (at random) because I was incredibly curious about learning everthing. Indices didn't enter into that picture, or that joy I experienced. By the time I was old enough to start needing to use an index, I would have killed for a search engine to focus my efforts. Now that ebooks are here (complete with search engines), I have zero interest in using someone else's curated, compiled points of interest in electronic indexes. I never don't know what I want to search for in a particular book anymore. Because I'm rarely searching for anything in a book I've not already read from cover to cover.
The fact of the matter is: only print index lovers love electronic indices. *shrug*
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I'm just saying that the index, especially in encyclopedic works, can function just as the encyclopediae we both loved so much growing up.
Another example would be an atlas, which many people don't use to find stuff but rather to educate themselves, to wander, or to heuristically discover new territory. I have yet to meet an atlas I have memorized, and use google earth to much the same effect.
Granted, indexes are clunky, abstract, and often quite subjective. Still, in the correct contexts, be it technical works, religious tomes, or dictionaries (basically one immense index), they can be quite useful.
The fact that
you "never don't know what [you] want to search for in a particular book anymore" really is neither here nor there.