Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

My first purchase when I opened my first office besides a desk and chair was a bookcase. Through the years the number of bookcases grew until I had an office with two walls from floor to ceiling full of books and bookshelves. Early on, I kept some old books for show, but that was quickly abandoned for even more bookcases to house the plethora of books I needed.

We used to have a librarian come monthly to file the updates to our tax services and that grew into two librarians coming every other week to keep our books updated as more services were added. My routine also changed along the way. I got into the habit of going through the tax updates and the added accounting, audit and growing advisory services’ updates each morning before I started my day. I found myself getting in earlier so I could get that out of the way. At some point I was spending an hour a day and felt if I didn’t, I would fall behind and did not want to hold up the librarians from filing them in the books that were important to keep updated and current.

I learned a lot from this process, was always pretty much current and had a routine that worked well for me.

At some point the paper services morphed into digital format. I cannot recall when or how, but it did and I remember when we told the librarian we needed only one person twice a month, and then once a month and eventually not at all.

I still had the bookcases filled with the services but at some point I felt that having a complete run of books that stopped three or four years ago did not look sharp and started to throw them away since they were no longer needed and created an outdated impression. It eventually got to the point where I could access the services from my house or at the client’s premises, on my laptop. I did not even need to print anything since I could bookmark the position or copy and paste the article, excerpt or URL site on my notes. 

As someone used to using paper reference books, I could rationalize hundreds of benefits lost by having everything digital, but the truth of the matter is that digital is the way things are done now. After getting used to it, I could probably come up with hundreds of benefits for digital. Here is one that came up a few years ago. I wanted to buy a nonbusiness book that someone I viewed as a thought leader in a certain area quoted frequently from. I went to Amazon.com and they sold the set of three books for $60.00 (with free shipping). The Kindle version was 80 cents lower, and I felt it would be a waste to not get the full three hardcover volumes for only 80 cents extra.

Well, the bookcases in my house are more than overflowing, and I simply had no place to put them, so I grudgingly bought the Kindle version. When I looked through it, I was able to search keywords in a matter of seconds, could electronically jump from page to page or topic to topic, and when I wanted a reference source or saw something off track and wanted to check them out, it was a matter of a couple of clicks. This was all done with my laptop on my lap while I had the TV on. Magic!!! Since then, I prefer to get the digital versions. I could also access all my Kindle books, which now number about 200, on my iPhone so I am never without something to read if I need to wait for someone.  

This column was precipitated by a friend’s posted request to give away his entire tax and legal reference library (acquired throughout his long and successful career), for free, to anyone who would pick it up or pay for the shipping. He had no takers. He is still practicing and realized he no longer uses any of the books.

Do not hesitate to contact me at [email protected] with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform.