I recently reacquainted myself with a gadget that was once one of my primary forms of data retrieval (a microfilm reader) in a place I don’t spend nearly enough time at (my local public library). The experience left me both grateful for the breadth and the precision of Web search–and a little nostalgic for the pleasant randomness inherent in microfilm in specific and libraries in general.

In my latest guest post over at BingTweets, I muse on the value of stumbling upon interesting stuff by accident in a post I called “The Search for Serendipity.” I’m not arguing for the return of microfilm. But I do feel like I’m a more well-informed person than I might have been if I’d never whir-whirred my way through untold reels of old newspapers back when I was in college and the Web didn’t yet exist…

 
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Read more: BingTweets, Nostalgia