The Unbearable Lightness of Metadata; Or, Why We Still Need the Stacks, Really

Finding books for this literature and religion essay has required searching multiple electronic databases (along with that handy standby, Amazon).  However, I've also been trawling the stacks on a regular basis, seeking, if not new life and new civilizations (boldly going, etc.), then new books that escaped my electronic net.  And I've found several.  No matter how many title, subject, author, publisher, and keyword searches you run on how many permutations of possible terms, you cannot compensate for the vagaries of the actual cataloging.  Books where all the metadata says one thing ("gender studies," "england," "literature, nineteenth century," etc.) may turn out to be relevant to some entirely different project, just as some titles are not as descriptive as they might first appear.  The only way to handle this issue is to walk over to the library, enter the stacks, scan the shelves, and check the TOCs.  I am aware that this is old-fashioned, insufficiently in tune with the electronic age, and so forth, but really, there's no other way to do a comprehensive search.  Hence the violence with which my poor head hit the desk when I read this news item about the University of Denver's plans for its library.  You cannot slough off most of the collection to remote storage! We still need physical access to the books! Really, honest to goodness, and all that!