How Amazon.com Changed Research (And Then Made Us Into Research)

“Devices and technologies that have become second nature to us – scanners and searchable PDFs, for example – first became familiar to many through Amazon. So did disintermediation: the sudden realization that” – thanks to the Search This Book feature – “we could work our way into a subject without taking a box of file cards to a reference room, riffling through catalogs and consulting librarians.”