“Librarians have been suggesting books to patrons for literally forever, mostly during actual face-to-face conversations,” Jessica Leber states. Can math model do it better, and more importantly, do we want it to?

Brooklyn’s public library set up a title recommendation service in which their librarians would read your submission and respond with appropriate books. It took a while at first.

“Wait time aside,” Leber says, “when I received my own response two weeks later, I had in hand not five, but six well thought out suggestions of literary science fiction novels I might enjoy (as per my request), all from authors I’d never read before. I felt really good about the list–not because I’ve actually read the six books yet, but by simply knowing there was a human being involved in creating it. The titles genuinely all seemed like books I might read, and Emily Heath, the librarian who fulfilled my request, had even placed a card catalogue-linked list in my online library account so I could more easily find and borrow them.”

The human element is part of what David Swartz misses in bookless libraries. When everything is digital and can only be found through search requests, you may be able to find what you’re looking for but not be able to stumble across the extra information you need. (via Prufrock)