Who Collected All These Books?

I just finished cleaning off the math and science bookcases that were in David's room. Yes, that was plural. Eight shelves of science and math books. I wanted to sort through them while David was home, since some of the science books were his, but not surprisingly he did not wish to keep very many of them. So now eight shelves have been sorted down to four shelves and I have piles of books all around me here in my office. They are mostly sorted according to subject (Calculus, general math, earth science, evolution, etc.) and now I just have to go through them one by one, make a list and decide how much I might be able to sell them for. I will list them first locally on my homeschool e-mail list and then try to sell whatever is left on e-bay.

It is amazing how many books I have accumulated over the years. Homeschooling has been a wonderful facilitator to my book addiction! There's no way I can blame all of these books on homeschooling, but certainly it has been a convenient excuse for me to collect so many. Our children were interested in so many subjects when they were younger and many of these books came in very handy then. Plus, I never knew what subject might come of interest, so more books were needed just in case. Although, over the past four or five years I have noticed a definitely decline in book usage for reference purposes. The Internet seems to be taking over that function. Even I will head first to Wikipedia or Google to research a topic rather than to my bookshelves. Are books becoming outdated as reference sources?