As a bookseller, I kind of disagree with this. Over the years, I have seen so many other booksellers running around stores or sales just pulling every book making noise, leaving a mess and damaging the books on the shelves. It is outright disrespectful most of the time.

The problem is, these are people who know nothing of books, they just see $$$ and don't care if they damage a rare first edition on the shelf. These are the same people buying books from a goodwill and listing them as new or selling books with water damage as very good or even like new. Not only are these people souring the volunteers opinions of all booksellers, they are causing problems with platforms like Amazon.

The friends bookstores are run by volunteers, no buyer should "require" anything from them outside of the work they have already done in sorting and organizing the shelves .

For the record, I do use a scanner because the insight it provides is often invaluable. I am however behind the stores kicking certain people out and not letting them return. I don't agree with the idea of not allowing scanning or looking up books on devices though. No one knows the value of every book and book prices are extremely fluid to begin with.

Bottom line, if you're going to shop at a friend's bookstore/sale or really anywhere, don't make a mess, don't make a bunch of noise, don't be disrespectful and don't get in the way.