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Digital libraries: Mr. LISNews is now a believer
October 9, 2005 | 8:13 am
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By David Rothman
LISNews is my favorite way of keeping up with the latest library news. And so I was delighted to read the following from Blake Carver, the mastermind behind this lively and informative site:
For years I’ve been on the fence when it comes to our digital future. I’ve always bought into the assumption that books are here to stay. That libraries will always have a place. That 100 years from now we’ll still want to browse the stacks to see what’s related. I think I’ve fallen off that fence, and landed on the side with the digitalists. I’ve chosen sides based on things I’ve read from both the crumugednons like Gorman, and the many techno-freaks on the other side. I don’t know what this means for the millions of books we hold currently. I don’t know what this means for the future of libraries & librarians, nor do I know what, if anything, we can do to ensure we’re still around in 20 years, but below I’ll share with you why I’ve moved from fence sitter, to digitalist.
The biggest threat we’re facing isn’t one of content, certainly we have the goods, but rather it’s the package. Or, like Chrystie Wrote, these new tools are replacing the library for people’s daily information needs. Society in general, and younger people in particular, are moving away from the printed word, our bread and butter for a century or two now, and away from libraries, for a number of reasons. Why should they care about or use print? They can’t put it on their iPod. They can’t put it on their laptop. And they can’t view it on a screen. They get most of the answers they need from Google. This is the essence of my argument. If most people are able to “get served” elsewhere, why do they need a book, a library, or a librarian?…
Needless to say, I doubt that Blake is saying librarians will definitely be useless. A more optimistic scenario is pretty evident to me, assuming that librarians can understand their new role: The more information, the more valuable will be the people who’ll organize it and evaluate it. So, yes, as I see it, librarians can thrive–if they can make the transition. In part that means more familiarity with the technology, and in part it means a changing of roles, with less emphasis on the routine aspects of librarianship and more emphasis on librarians as content-creators and -evaluators. Especially I can see a continued role for neighborhood libraries for such activities as story-telling hours and book clubs, and as a glue to hold neighborhoods together.
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Comments:
Seriously, do young people really read on-screen all the time? Why shouldn’t they care about or use print? Several studies have shown that once college students found the useful papers online, they prefer print-out for reading in the future.
Thanks for your thoughts, Lu. I’d welcome your forwarding copies and/or URLs of the studies.One issue would be the kinds of hardware and software used for e-book reading.
Paper has its advantages. And yes I print some things out to read on paper.
But if you look at ALL the reading you do — email, websites, reports from colleagues, your own documents in your word-processing application — I would be very surprised if it’s not more than half on-screen. And I think that applies to anyone whose job involves a computer, not just young people.
My own estimate is that 80 percent of readers read more than half their text on-screen. (Totally unscientific, though I have polled groups with a show of hand method.)
[...] [Found via TeleRead, a weblog about E-Book readers Posted by president in LIS related [...]
David, I may jump to the statement too quickly. But, we should ask the question carefully. First, in what sense the word “reading” is used here? I believe we consider “reading” as reading articles, or in a narrower sense, we consider reading books. Therefore, reading such as reading email is not very appropriate in this context. Second, What are the purposes/goals of reading? Do different purposes of reading affect readers’ preference to different media (paper vs. electronic)? For example, suppose you are reading a PDF doc to locate a piece of information, you probably want to read on screen by using search function (suppose PDF doc is searchable and you know what you are looking for). On the other hand, people may feel more comfortable reading on paper for extended, longer period reading. To quote Michael Gorman and Walt Crawford (1995, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality), “the debate about the future of print is really not about print on paper versus electronic technology. It is about reading and the best means to read”, though they try to “demonstrate that print-on-paper is the best vehicle for sustained reading and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future”.
For the reference, Linda Martin and Mark Platt (2001) examine print vs. on-screen consumption of information by medical school students. Carol Tenopir and Donald King investigate the use of print and electronic journals by astronomers, medical faculty, engineers and etc. More investigations of reasons for reading on paper see Adler et al. (1998), O’Hara and Sellen (1997), and O’Hara et al. (1998).
Adler, A., Gujar, A., Harrison, B.L., O’Hara, K., & Sellen A. (1998). A diary study of work-related reading: Design implications for digital reading devices. CHI’98.
O’Hara, K., Smith, F., Newman, W., & Sellen, A. (1998). Student readers’ use of library documents: Implications for library technologies. In Proceedings of CHI ’98, 233-240.
O’Hara, K., & Sellen, A (1997). A comparison of reading paper and on-line documents. In Proceedings of CHI ’97, 335-342.
Tenopir, C., King, D., Boyce, P., Grayson, M., & Paulson, K.L. (2005). Relying on electronic journals: Reading patterns of Astronomers. Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(8), 786-802.
Tenopir, C., King, D., & Bush, A. (2004). Medical Faculty’s Use of Print and Electronic Journals: Changes Over Time and Comparison with Other Scientists. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 92(2), 233-241.
Tenopir, C., & King, D. (2003). Communication Patterns of Engineers. Piscataway, N.J.: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
If you need the PDF of the papers, please let me know.
Thanks for the citations, Lu, and, yes, I would appreciate your sending the PDFs of those papers. Considering how much screen technology has improved, I’m not certain how valid some of the earlier papers would be today. What’s more, I’d be curious to know about the software in use in the actual studies. For example, PDF is notorious for often limiting the users’ choices.
I’m fighting a bunch of deadlines, but later this year I do plan to do an article addressing the major myths about e-books.
Long-term, I’m optimistic. I can recall Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman ranting against blogs–and then more or less recanting. Hey, give them enough time, and they’ll come around about e-books, even if it takes another few years. Of course, I wouldn’t mind their being a little bit more enlightened earlier on. The sooner libraries can prepare seriously for e-books as a medium for sustained reading, the less chance the library community has of being Amazoned and Googled away.
Many thanks,
David
P.S. Send the PDFs or links to drNOSPAMPLEASEteleread.com
“I can recall Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman ranting against blogs–and then more or less recanting. Hey, give them enough time, and they’ll come around about e-books, even if it takes another few years.”
Your recollection is faulty, to put it as nicely as possible. Show me where I “ranted against blogs”–and, for that matter, show me where Michael Gorman “more or less recanted.” Lumping the two of us together is about as amusing as your “Ludd” nonsense. (Yes, you can probably find places where I’ve said that blogs aren’t the be-all and end-all and probably won’t massively disrupt traditional media. Still true. Hardly a rant.)
If “come around about e-books” means “admit that ebooks have their uses,” I did that ten years ago. If “come around about ebooks” means “agree with David Rothman,” I wouldn’t advise holding your breath.
Planet Earth was stunned when you finally did a Web log, but, no, that isn’t quite the same as a rant. Score one for Walt Crawford, at least based on some quick Googling. As for Michael Gorman, it wasn’t a full recant, but he was pinned down to the point where he had to trot out the “satire” excuse in explaining Revenge of the Blog People!. I’m happy to set the record straight.
Those are details, however, in the context of this thread. I continue to regard reference-related apps as just a small part of the value of e-books. With the right hardware and software, they are fit for sustained reading. I can read hour after hour on a Cybook even though it lacks the resolution of a good Tablet PC. My life would be poorer if it weren’t for all the classics I could enjoy from Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders. The issue isn’t just the comfort level in reading books, but also their sheer availability. Without e-books for example, I could never have discovered such gems as New Grub Street. Try finding that at your typical public library.
Walt, you’re welcome to disagree about e-books–this is a subjective judgment–but time is on the side of the believers. A whole new generation is growing up accustomed to reading on the screen, and the technology is just going to get better and better, with E-Ink and similar technologies making e-books closer and closer to p-books. I hope libraries are ready for that day when the pages of e- and p-books won’t look that different.
Also, let me note that there are areas in which we might agree, such as on the need to choose tools carefully. I love RSS feeds, for example, but they are no replacement for books. In fact, that’s part of my argument for getting e-books online in a massive way through a well-stocked national digital library system. Let’s make it as easy as possible for young people and others to enjoy online pointers not just to library and retail catalogs, but to the actual texts of real books. Interestingly, some of the most persuasive pointers might come from blogs and RSS feeds. Bottom line? There are many tasks and many tools, just as you’ve more or less written. We agree on that! I simply happen to see e-books as fit for more than you’ve said they’re good for. Perhaps you can enlighten us some more as to your present feelings about them.
In a slightly related vein, I’d also be curious about your feelings toward PDF, which you continue to use in your newsletter. To me, PDF read on screen is one of the major reasons why more people don’t stick with the e-books; there is no substitute for easily reflowable text. Have you tried such alternatives as Mobipocket, especially on a good PDA or tablet? Mobipocket has its deficiencies, such as for STM publishing, but I find it far superior to PDF for recreational reading. What e-reading programs have you tried, and on what devices?
Thanks,
David
I don’t spend much time at Teleread (and won’t change that), and I don’t frankly spend much time on ebooks lately.
As for Mobipocket: Why would I bother? I design my ejournal as a print journal, to make highly efficient use of paper. I also care about typography, and PDF supports that. I even paid real $ for Berkeley Oldstyle Book because it’s an even better serif than Arrus, my old favorite (and Berkeley Book isn’t in any of the inexpensive typeface collections)–and with PDF, the reader gets what I design. I don’t design C&I for PDA reading.
I don’t use mobile e-devices because I don’t have any particular need for them. I read short pieces on the screen, of course–who doesn’t?–but I sure as heck don’t do recreational reading on screen.
But then, I’ve also offered all or almost all of the essays in Cites & Insights as HTML separates for quite a while now, as you’d know if you bothered to check. I just hope people aren’t printing it out that way: As I expected, it uses almost twice as much paper. But it’s vanilla HTML (Word’s “stripped” HTML turns out to be concise CSS-based minimalist tagging), with no special features, and should reflow as well as any other HTML. I don’t think it’s nearly as readable as the PDF print version, but it’s there for those that prefer it.
Oh, and Planet Earth didn’t give a hoot when I started a blog (not “finally”–with C&I, my LISNews journal, and my columns, there was no good reason for me to start a blog until this April, and I saw no reason to start a blog just to start a blog). A few hundred librarians and related folks may be interested, but 99.99% of the population have better things to do than read Walt at Random.
Many thanks for your thoughts, Walt. If you ever do decide to get into e-books in a more serious way, catch up with me and I’ll so what I can to help. – David