Another Book of Interest

Sometimes it seems to me that we can actually have too many choices.  And the internet isn't helping that, since it seems merely to be increasing the number of choices that we have.  Not always for the better.

As an illustration of this, I refer you to a book that I had run across on the web, English Heraldic Book-Stamps by Cyril Davenport, published in 1909.  "Interesting," I thought to myself.  "I'll have to go out and take a look."  So I did.  Turns out it was downloadable from Scribed.com, which I hadn't used before.  Not a problem.  I clicked on "download", and it turned out that it wanted me to sign in, preferably using either my Scribed or Facebook login.  Okay, I've got a Facebook login, so I went ahead used that.  It took a while to think about it, then told me what Facebook friends I had were on Scribed, and eventually took me to a Scribed screen where I had the opportunity to upload stuff to Scribed so that others could download it.  I poked about and found, and clicked on, "Continue to download."  Finally I got to where I could download it as a .pdf, and did so.

After getting it onto the computer and opening it up, I discovered that it had been originally scanned in and uploaded to the web by the Internet Text Archive (one of my favorite places to obtain copies of older, out-of-copyright heraldry books).  Additionally, the ITA gives you several options for downloading books: .pdf, black and white .pdf (which is a smaller file), .txt, and several e-reader formats.  And you don't have to use a Facebook or any other login to do it.  So please, if you're at all interested in this book, feel free to drop by the Internet Text Archive website and take a look.  Download it, even.  Read through it at your leisure.  You can find it at http://www.archive.org/details/englishheraldicb00daverich

Without having to log in, go through several screens to get to it, and then have but a single (the largest) download option.  Unless, of course, you like doing all that.  In which case, the choice is (choices are?) yours.  It's at http://www.scribd.com/doc/32230360/English-heraldic-book-stamps