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roygerdodger
Phoenix
Joined: Jul 16, 2006
Age: 18
Posts: 1600
Location: The Golden City
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 Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 10:11 pm Post subject: Do you still use reference books? |
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I still use textbooks, encyclopedias, and dictionaries every now and then, but I know in some classes nowadays, they use the internet to look up stuff for assignments.
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southwestforests
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Joined: Jul 19, 2009
Age: 46
Posts: 1138
Location: A little ways south of the river
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 11:18 pm Post subject: Re: Do you still use reference books? |
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| roygerdodger wrote: | | Do you still use reference books? |
If more than dictionaries and all are included, absolutely yes, especially for train stuff and model train stuff.
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visagrunt
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Joined: Oct 17, 2009
Age: 42
Posts: 595
Location: Vancouver, BC
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| Posted: Fri Nov 06, 2009 11:53 pm Post subject: |
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I like the look and feel of classic books. But who can afford them at home?
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Michael_Stuart
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Age: 15
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Location: Europe
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 5:09 am Post subject: |
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I have a fancy encyclopedia, but it can't give the same amount of information Wikipedia or other sources can, so it's not very useful. I do however often use my gargantuan Oxford dictionary.
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aleclair
Deinonychus
Joined: Oct 19, 2006
Age: 19
Posts: 384
Location: Pennsylvania
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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It feels that now, even what we'd call the "books" are all on the Interwebs. I'm referring here only to scholarly sources - not user-made content like Wikipedia. If I need a scholarly journal article for a paper, we have a million billion databases at my university that I can do a full-text search in. Likewise for things like the OED: I can just get that online if I am on campus.
That being said, I am a math major, and the mathematics parts of Wikipedia are just about as scholarly and well-researched as the typical math textbook. However, you need a ton of math background, most of which I do not have yet, to understand the bulk of it. However, there are enough free, respectable math texts online that if you had the algebra/trig/calculus background, you could learn any aspect of math you wanted.
Certainly, real books are nice, but in the end, it's about impossible to do a text search in a book, say, if you are looking for a particular quotation and you forget its page number. So I could live without reference books. When reading for fun, though, I need to look at a real book: the computer screen gets tiring fast. |
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GoonSquad
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Joined: May 12, 2007
Age: 40
Posts: 815
Location: The City of Townsville
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| Posted: Sat Nov 07, 2009 11:21 pm Post subject: |
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| aleclair wrote: | It feels that now, even what we'd call the "books" are all on the Interwebs. I'm referring here only to scholarly sources - not user-made content like Wikipedia. If I need a scholarly journal article for a paper, we have a million billion databases at my university that I can do a full-text search in. Likewise for things like the OED: I can just get that online if I am on campus.
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Yeah, I try to use scholarly databases first if I need 'legit' sources to backup ideas in a paper. Sometimes that works great, sometime not, depending on the subject.
For quick, dirty definitions you can't beat answers.com!
Real books are nice, but who has time for them anymore?
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