The Green Apple Mega-death-smackdown-super-ironic-silly-athon continues as the handselling capabilities of a good bookseller (or, as it’s known in librariana, Reader’s Advisory) is compared to keyword searching. Okay, so maybe the contest was a little rigged. Still, there’s a real point to be made here: when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, a curated collection of hand-picked books (and someone who knows them) has an advantage over a bunch of stuff with a search engine. Not that too many bookstores or libraries will likely have close to hand that particular book . . .
