Are Books Out of Fashion?
Are books out of fashion? Five years ago, Thomas Benton, a college English lecturer observed that “The library -- perhaps like the human body -- must be purged of its decadent physicality and relocated into the realm of pure intellect, pure information, pure rationality, eternally updated, preserved as an endless stream of instantaneous electronic data” (“Red-Hot Library Lust”). Back then, researchers were wondering whether print books would still be available in five years’ time: “Does print really have an anticipated life span of five more years? Will e-books finally take off? After nearly two decades of talking about how e-books are right around the corner, have we finally reached the corner?” (Nelson, "E-Books in Higher Education: Nearing the End of the Era of Hype?")
Electronic publishing clearly is not erasing books in the sense of content; on the net, even “old books” are available. Online one can find old, out of print, and rare books, in electronic form. It’s not just a matter of hard copy versus electronic books though: people prefer shorter texts these days, and they read in a different way. Our students are an excellent example. They skim, scan, and read small chunks of text, unlike previous generations. Their preference seems to be for information from web sites rather than books, whether electronic or hard copy; the wider web is more appealing to them in its immediacy than the e-book section of the online library, just a few more clicks away. On the other hand, some academics claim “We're Still in Love With Books”; the transition away from old-fashioned reading has been slower than anticipated. As William Pannapacker put it, when new media emerge, they do not immediately replace old media.
Posted by May Mikati on 26 January 2012, 11:08 AM
Are books out of fashion? Five years ago, Thomas Benton, a college English lecturer observed that “The library -- perhaps like the human body -- must be purged of its decadent physicality and relocated into the realm of pure intellect, pure information, pure rationality, eternally updated, preserved as an endless stream of instantaneous electronic data” (“Red-Hot Library Lust”). Back then, researchers were wondering whether print books would still be available in five years’ time: “Does print really have an anticipated life span of five more years? Will e-books finally take off? After nearly two decades of talking about how e-books are right around the corner, have we finally reached the corner?” (Nelson, "E-Books in Higher Education: Nearing the End of the Era of Hype?")
Electronic publishing clearly is not erasing books in the sense of content; on the net, even “old books” are available. Online one can find old, out of print, and rare books, in electronic form. It’s not just a matter of hard copy versus electronic books though: people prefer shorter texts these days, and they read in a different way. Our students are an excellent example. They skim, scan, and read small chunks of text, unlike previous generations. Their preference seems to be for information from web sites rather than books, whether electronic or hard copy; the wider web is more appealing to them in its immediacy than the e-book section of the online library, just a few more clicks away. On the other hand, some academics claim “We're Still in Love With Books”; the transition away from old-fashioned reading has been slower than anticipated. As William Pannapacker put it, when new media emerge, they do not immediately replace old media.
Posted by May Mikati on 26 January 2012, 11:08 AM
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