I admit, I make frequent use of Google Books. Among the search engine's many conveniences is the ability to scan large portions of published text for specific terms sought out by users like me. Recently, an article I was developing for one of my freelance gigs required me to say a few words about the Macedonian diaspora. Before I even ventured to the library, Google Books allowed me to make a preliminary search of the texts that would prove most helpful in my quest. Clicking the link provided by the completed search conveniently redirected me to the exact page in each book containing the phrase "Macedonian diaspora." Unfortunately, copyright restrictions bar me from reading the contents of most books in their entirety online; pages of varying quantity are omitted, still forcing the researcher and reader to consult the book physical, rather than depend solely on the book cyber.
There's something particularly alluring about having a book's entire contents a mere mouse click away--perhaps it's convenience, efficiency, or a combination of both. Certainly searching the text of several relevant volumes for the topics pertinent to your own research significantly whittles down the time it previously took to consult individual tomes in the dusty stacks of a university library. However, I wonder what impact the growing digitization of books will have on a society in some ways becoming increasingly atomized by the very technology aimed at bringing it together.
An interesting article on cleaveland.com speculates about the future of books as we know them, hinting that we should prepare ourself for more digitized content, sometimes even at the expense of a print alternative. For institutions of higher learning, e-books provide a cost-cutting substitution for traditional tomes. The article states that in 2008, Columbia University acquired90,000 physical volumes--a vast amount--but an additional 380,000 electronic books were also acquired. The proportion is staggering.
Advocates of digitization maintain that their goal is noble: mainly, the "democratization" of knowledge. A public domain like the internet -- where anyone can post largely unregulated content free of charge -- could also be home to the vast repositories of the world's innumerable libraries. In The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton likens these lofty aims to the fundamental theoretical principles underpinning the Republic of Letters--right before professionalization overtook idealism in the nineteenth century. Darnton, a supporter of Google's digitization efforts, maintains that the spirit in which Google undertook its project ought not to be fettered by capitalist greed, despite a recognition for accountability to stakeholders and compensation to authors and publishers. However, Google was sued in 2005 by several publishers, who claimed that the scanned books infringed on existing copyright laws; a settlement was nevertheless reached several months earlier. I won't go into the details of the suit or its outcome. You can read about it elsewhere.
Two years ago, when I first began grad school, I recall our DGS' new toy. He stalked the hallowed halls of the ivory tower with what might have been a prototype of the amazon Kindle. When bored by colloquium, he could be seen doodling on it, reading digital books, and even editing his grad students' papers with a few touches of his plastic pseudo-pencil. Maybe the Kindle doesn't have these same capabilities, but I do recall him smugly asserting that this was the wave of the future: the complete and total digitization of books and even whole archival collections. "You'll never even have to leave your comfy university office again to spend time with the original documents," I recall him saying. "Unless you really want to fondle the real Declaration of the Rights of Man or lick the parchment of the Domesday Book. No, you'll be able to access everything from the convenience of your desktop. Isn't this great, kids?" (OK, perhaps that was paraphrased, but you get the idea.)
I'm not sure how I feel about the digitization of books, though the big 'L' liberal in me loves the idea, especially if there's no fee-for-access terms attached. Most of the classics I so enjoy reading are already available for free through Google Books, but I still spend the money on a $5 copy of Lady Audley's Secret rather than read it on my laptop computer. The suggestion that books are inherently more mobile than laptop computers and can be taken anywhere with you won't hold up against advocates of the Kindle and contraptions of their ilk. Last month I was seated beside a woman on a Toronto bus who was reading a Russian novel on her PDA-like gadget--clearly, like the book, the Kindle can go where you go.
I'll likely lose on the environmental argument as well, since my counterpoint is purely a sentimental one. I don't know if the mass production of Kindles will prove significantly better for the environment, though a .pdf file saves on the cost of paper, ink, and technology. This does have its pros in a society increasingly concerned with its carbon footprint. But, what about the pure enjoyment of reading a form that's, in a way, a treasured cultural artifact of western civilization still in use today? I'm probably in a minority, but seeing the original Bible or a first edition of Madame Bovary is much more exciting in real life than viewing it on any two-dimensional screen; likewise, reading a book in the comfort of your favourite chair beats sitting in front of a computer any day.
I also tend to think of the long-range impact on students. Yes, by digitizing books we have the opportunity to provide vast resources generally unavailable to most institutions of higher learning were it not for the wonders of interlibrary loan; but, at the same time, what are we doing to our students? In twenty years will any of them know what a book even was, or will libraries go the way of the dodo. If you can read a copy of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan or Machiavelli's The Prince online, then what's the point of bookstores or circulating libraries?
TA'ing for two semesters confirmed my suspicion that the internet has bred a generation of students completely unaware of the print resources available. As a late recipient of the internet (it became known to me in the last years of high school), I was taught to consult encyclopedias, dictionaries, maps, and other reference volumes in my pursuit of knowledge. One of the first assignments a class of freshmen taking "The Medieval West" were required to complete was a map quiz, where a list of cities and territories of historical significance were to be plotted on a blank map of Europe. Many students encountered a "dead end," as they called it, when they were unable to determine the lands belonging to Eleanor of Acquitaine. "I can't find it online," they complained to me during office hours. Naturally, I redirected them to the library and to historical maps of the period with which they were concerned. "Try the library catalogue," I suggested. I sometimes wonder whether the growing accessibility and convenience of the digital age doesn't inhibit the development of intellectual resourcefulness. If the internet doesn't have what a student is searching for, few will turn to print sources, simply because they are unfamiliar with the kinds of aids available, and this is a real shame. (And don't even get me started with the plagiarism problem, the rampant citations of Wikipedia in college essays, and the inability of students to distinguish between legitimate secondary sources on the internet and those posted by some nut living in his parents' basement.)
The late John Updike's defence of the printed book resonated with me because some of my fondest childhood memories are connected with reading. I treasure my tattered copies of Anne of Green Gables, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Little Women, all read before the age of thirteen and stowed safely away in my hope chest. I recall curling up in bed next to my mother on a cold winter night in sixth grade while she read Jane Eyre aloud and I even mourned alongside Jane (complete with tears!) when Helen Burns passed away. For me, there is now an ascribed emotive character to these books. Regardless of where I move, they always go with me; I cherish them. I doubt I could ever feel the same way towards a .pdf copy of David Copperfield or A Soldier of the Great War.
Updike's observes that,
"The printed, bound and paid-for book was — still is, for the moment — more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness...For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity."
How accurate that is! Please, booksellers, "defend your lonely forts," as Updike urged. There's still an audience who likes to feel the rough and the smooth of the paper, the gloss of the cover, and the embossing of a dust jacket too much to allow the book physical to be the next casualty of the digital age. I only hope there are more out there who feel the same way.
So, while I don't necessarily oppose the digitization project -- heck, it'll go on with or without my consent -- I do worry that in the process we'll lose a bit of our own cultural identity along with it, and in some respects I think that's pretty tragic.
There's something particularly alluring about having a book's entire contents a mere mouse click away--perhaps it's convenience, efficiency, or a combination of both. Certainly searching the text of several relevant volumes for the topics pertinent to your own research significantly whittles down the time it previously took to consult individual tomes in the dusty stacks of a university library. However, I wonder what impact the growing digitization of books will have on a society in some ways becoming increasingly atomized by the very technology aimed at bringing it together.
An interesting article on cleaveland.com speculates about the future of books as we know them, hinting that we should prepare ourself for more digitized content, sometimes even at the expense of a print alternative. For institutions of higher learning, e-books provide a cost-cutting substitution for traditional tomes. The article states that in 2008, Columbia University acquired90,000 physical volumes--a vast amount--but an additional 380,000 electronic books were also acquired. The proportion is staggering.
Advocates of digitization maintain that their goal is noble: mainly, the "democratization" of knowledge. A public domain like the internet -- where anyone can post largely unregulated content free of charge -- could also be home to the vast repositories of the world's innumerable libraries. In The New York Review of Books, Robert Darnton likens these lofty aims to the fundamental theoretical principles underpinning the Republic of Letters--right before professionalization overtook idealism in the nineteenth century. Darnton, a supporter of Google's digitization efforts, maintains that the spirit in which Google undertook its project ought not to be fettered by capitalist greed, despite a recognition for accountability to stakeholders and compensation to authors and publishers. However, Google was sued in 2005 by several publishers, who claimed that the scanned books infringed on existing copyright laws; a settlement was nevertheless reached several months earlier. I won't go into the details of the suit or its outcome. You can read about it elsewhere.
Two years ago, when I first began grad school, I recall our DGS' new toy. He stalked the hallowed halls of the ivory tower with what might have been a prototype of the amazon Kindle. When bored by colloquium, he could be seen doodling on it, reading digital books, and even editing his grad students' papers with a few touches of his plastic pseudo-pencil. Maybe the Kindle doesn't have these same capabilities, but I do recall him smugly asserting that this was the wave of the future: the complete and total digitization of books and even whole archival collections. "You'll never even have to leave your comfy university office again to spend time with the original documents," I recall him saying. "Unless you really want to fondle the real Declaration of the Rights of Man or lick the parchment of the Domesday Book. No, you'll be able to access everything from the convenience of your desktop. Isn't this great, kids?" (OK, perhaps that was paraphrased, but you get the idea.)
I'm not sure how I feel about the digitization of books, though the big 'L' liberal in me loves the idea, especially if there's no fee-for-access terms attached. Most of the classics I so enjoy reading are already available for free through Google Books, but I still spend the money on a $5 copy of Lady Audley's Secret rather than read it on my laptop computer. The suggestion that books are inherently more mobile than laptop computers and can be taken anywhere with you won't hold up against advocates of the Kindle and contraptions of their ilk. Last month I was seated beside a woman on a Toronto bus who was reading a Russian novel on her PDA-like gadget--clearly, like the book, the Kindle can go where you go.
I'll likely lose on the environmental argument as well, since my counterpoint is purely a sentimental one. I don't know if the mass production of Kindles will prove significantly better for the environment, though a .pdf file saves on the cost of paper, ink, and technology. This does have its pros in a society increasingly concerned with its carbon footprint. But, what about the pure enjoyment of reading a form that's, in a way, a treasured cultural artifact of western civilization still in use today? I'm probably in a minority, but seeing the original Bible or a first edition of Madame Bovary is much more exciting in real life than viewing it on any two-dimensional screen; likewise, reading a book in the comfort of your favourite chair beats sitting in front of a computer any day.
I also tend to think of the long-range impact on students. Yes, by digitizing books we have the opportunity to provide vast resources generally unavailable to most institutions of higher learning were it not for the wonders of interlibrary loan; but, at the same time, what are we doing to our students? In twenty years will any of them know what a book even was, or will libraries go the way of the dodo. If you can read a copy of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan or Machiavelli's The Prince online, then what's the point of bookstores or circulating libraries?
TA'ing for two semesters confirmed my suspicion that the internet has bred a generation of students completely unaware of the print resources available. As a late recipient of the internet (it became known to me in the last years of high school), I was taught to consult encyclopedias, dictionaries, maps, and other reference volumes in my pursuit of knowledge. One of the first assignments a class of freshmen taking "The Medieval West" were required to complete was a map quiz, where a list of cities and territories of historical significance were to be plotted on a blank map of Europe. Many students encountered a "dead end," as they called it, when they were unable to determine the lands belonging to Eleanor of Acquitaine. "I can't find it online," they complained to me during office hours. Naturally, I redirected them to the library and to historical maps of the period with which they were concerned. "Try the library catalogue," I suggested. I sometimes wonder whether the growing accessibility and convenience of the digital age doesn't inhibit the development of intellectual resourcefulness. If the internet doesn't have what a student is searching for, few will turn to print sources, simply because they are unfamiliar with the kinds of aids available, and this is a real shame. (And don't even get me started with the plagiarism problem, the rampant citations of Wikipedia in college essays, and the inability of students to distinguish between legitimate secondary sources on the internet and those posted by some nut living in his parents' basement.)
The late John Updike's defence of the printed book resonated with me because some of my fondest childhood memories are connected with reading. I treasure my tattered copies of Anne of Green Gables, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Little Women, all read before the age of thirteen and stowed safely away in my hope chest. I recall curling up in bed next to my mother on a cold winter night in sixth grade while she read Jane Eyre aloud and I even mourned alongside Jane (complete with tears!) when Helen Burns passed away. For me, there is now an ascribed emotive character to these books. Regardless of where I move, they always go with me; I cherish them. I doubt I could ever feel the same way towards a .pdf copy of David Copperfield or A Soldier of the Great War.
Updike's observes that,
"The printed, bound and paid-for book was — still is, for the moment — more exacting, more demanding, of its producer and consumer both. It is the site of an encounter, in silence, of two minds, one following in the other's steps but invited to imagine, to argue, to concur on a level of reflection beyond that of personal encounter, with all its merely social conventions, its merciful padding of blather and mutual forgiveness...For some of us, books are intrinsic to our sense of personal identity."
How accurate that is! Please, booksellers, "defend your lonely forts," as Updike urged. There's still an audience who likes to feel the rough and the smooth of the paper, the gloss of the cover, and the embossing of a dust jacket too much to allow the book physical to be the next casualty of the digital age. I only hope there are more out there who feel the same way.
So, while I don't necessarily oppose the digitization project -- heck, it'll go on with or without my consent -- I do worry that in the process we'll lose a bit of our own cultural identity along with it, and in some respects I think that's pretty tragic.
0 comments:
Post a Comment