I got rid of about eight boxes (copy paper boxes) of books. Many of them were public domain classics that are available in digital for free. I still have a lot of books; I think I’ll do a second purge. It will be cool to actually have some space on the shelves!

Most of my “saved” magazines are crochet and other needlework patterns. I would like to scan the patterns, save them on my external hard drive, and back it all up remotely. That will get rid of a lot more clutter. I have a half-shelf full of needlework-related books that are hardback books or have lots of illustrations, which I will keep. When I want to make one of those patterns, I can just print it out. I tend to make photocopies of my patterns anyway so I can write on them and fold them up and stick them in my bag, and then toss them when I’m finished.

This would allow you to carry around your entire library of intact e-books and e-magazines, e-textbooks too, plus those “e-scraps” that account for the rest of your accumulated knowledge and interests.

I see this as one of the best ways of organizing and keeping the text- and graphic-based content you own in a compact space, and I’m hoping a future magazine-sized color reader, combined with the right software, and widespread availability of digital content, will someday make it a reality.

But am I holding my breath? Not on your life. Getting those three elements together, plus the copyright and legal hassles that will be involved when people can cut and paste their scraps (and, most likely, be able to send them to others), will likely be a nightmare.