Journals R.I.P.

I cleaned house today: a few years of my favorite print journals were stacked high, soon to enter the recycling bin:




R.I.P., journal clutter.


It's funny.  As a medical student, I cut out articles and carefully sorted them by topic in manila folders separated by organ systems in a large standup file cabinet for easy reference.  I cherished that file system for it contained the latest and greatest articles on whatever topic I needed.

Next came the purview of the really cool docs: bound journals.  Boy, did you look bad-ass having bound journals on your shelf (just like those in the library!).  It only cost a minor fortune to send them to a binding company, wait several months and, presto, you were as cool as your professors and ALWAYS had the latest articles you needed close by.

But as fast as that moment arrived, it disappeared.

After all, the volume of journals you needed quickly quadrupled, quintupled, and expanded faster than vinegar to baking soda.  Stacks and stacks of journals accumulated in my office so quickly that I found I never had time to read them all.  So I triaged: New England Journal of Medicine?  Nope.  Annals of Internal Medicine?  Nope.  JACC?  Sure.  Heart Rhythm?  Have to have that one.  PACE?  Not so much. 

And on and on it went.

But now, thankfully, there's RSS feeds.  And Google.

So goodbye my paper-backed friends, it's been wonderful.  Thanks for all the memories and the security of knowing you were there.

May you now, officially, rest in peace.

Somewhere else.

-Wes