[NnamdiJr]

"Nothing really replaces the experience of having a wall of books you have read and curated". I strongly second that.

As a long-time avid reader, over the past decade its been an interesting change going from a wholly physical library to mostly digital, thanks to my Galaxy Note and Kindle.

But something I truly miss is having friends come over and curiously rifle through the books on my shelf and the conversations that were started as they asked about each one (as well as the opportunity to show-off a bit). Almost as nice an experience was, sneaking a peek at the cover of the book a guy sitting next to me on the subway/bus was reading and going on to discover that it is another good read.

So far, none of the digital bookstores/libraries have been able to sufficiently reproduce this experience for me.. though I have hope they, or something else, will be able to in the near future. Until then, I will keep a physical copy of any favorites on my shelf for that next curious mind.

[WalterBright]

I've had many walls of books for many decades, and can only remember a couple incidents where anyone ever poked through them.

Now, I'm in the process of cutting them up, running them through a scanner, and throwing them in the recycling bin. I have apps for ipod and kindle that enable me to browse the books on my lan, and I enjoy poking through them that way from whereever I am in the house.

I'm looking forward to the day that I can store the entire thing on my ereader. So far, that would be 70Gb, but I expect it to rise by at least a factor of 10.

[hosh]

Almost all my friends come over make a beeline for my library and start poking around.

Sometimes, I look at a person and pick out a book that they need. Maybe it is because I am gushing over book X and pressing it into their hands.

If you don't have friends poking around in your library, it's probably best to drop it into the cloud. Those collections get heavy. That's why I am thinking of up designs to draw people into the virtual library.