11 December 2011

No books

I don't normally cover items from Leland Meitzler's Genealogy Blog as it's usually US-centric, but the item Book Venders Banned from the RootsTech Exhibit Hall is of more than US interest, a sign of the times.

It refers to a note from RootsTech's Exhibit Hall Coordinator that:

"RootsTech exhibit hall is for technically related products and services. We are purposefully not accepting applications from genealogical studies, book publishers, book resellers or arts and crafts dealers."
This appears to continue the trend I sensed last year from the conference  - nothing to learn from the past, no room for the conventional. Reminds me of the Dot Com bubble days when we were told the old ways of evaluating stocks no longer applied.

Best use all tools at your disposal, and use them together.

3 comments:

Hugh Reekie said...

Writing and publishing a book, carefully structured, with Chapter Titles, introduction and index is a very technical, or carefully done, activity. The fact that books have been around for hundreds of years does not reduce their modern-day usefulness. Many recent books, with detailed photos, expose the high-tech of modern printing, My only regret - why do books omit the Chapter summaries, immediately below the chapter title, so common in Victorian books? A technical feature that is sadly lost.
- Hugh Reekie

Ellen Thorne Morris said...

Some visitors are spouses, who look through books while the other half is drooling through tech stuff. It would be enough for me to refuse to go along with friends.

Paul Jones said...

I don't see a problem. If I were staging a car show and had limited exhibit space, I might not accept displays from boat manufacturers. That wouldn't mean I think boats have no role in transportation. My sole focus would be to give maximum value to those paying good money to attend a car show. There are always travel shows for those with broader interests. Surely the same logic applies here--and I speak as someone who loves books and owns far more of them than I can reasonably expect to read in this lifetime.