P-books and steam engines: Oh, the smell of it all!

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By David Rothman

P-book defenders are extolling the “vices” of dead-tree books as if they were “virtues”–just like old railroad lovers romanticizing the filthy smoke of coalfired steam engines. That’s one viewpoint in a newly revisited debate betweeen ibiblio archivist Paul Jones and a poet named Betty Adcock.

Himself a poet, Jones says p-books, like e-books, “have many not so great sides to them. The smell that Betty talks about of an old library is the smell of the books rotting.”

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