WSJ and the digital future of books
May 22nd, 2008 by U-G Nilsson
On Monday May 19 L. Gordon Crovitz had an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Digital Future of Books.” The essay is mostly talking about the Kindle device (mentioned before in the university library blog), but the author is also arguing about the general idea and nature of digital books.
Some interesting quotes from the article:
“… perhaps a new digital device like the Kindle can help us regain the attention spans earlier devices helped us lose. If so, this could become a great era for books, or more accurately for the future of words that for centuries could be delivered only in book form”
and the last line is thought-provoking: “With innovations like the Kindle, digital media can help return to us our attention spans and extend what makes books great: words and their meaning.”
We can not buy any of the new charming devices in Sweden yet, but we offer a lot of e-books in our library collections!
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:02 pm
[...] ställer mig litet tveksam till detta med “the Kindle device” som biblioteket skriver om på bloggen. Jag må vara en tekniknörd, och det må vara att jag inte skriver ut mina e-brev eller ens [...]
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
I saw that the comments on this track has moved to Tekniska högskolan VD! Strange…
Anyway, regarding e-books, I think we have to be more open minded than just discuss reading. I will certainly agree that reading fiction will suffer from the e-media. I only read printed novels!
But how about other types of literature and other kinds of reading? A novel you read or not. It´s full of emotions, characters and atmosphere and the meaning of the reading can only be fulfilled by follwing the story to the end. But textbooks, anthologies, handbooks you read for a specific purpose and not always from page 1 to page 561. Think about the possibility to see just the 8 pages that are of interest for you instead of reading a whole book. Also with well developed e-books the possibilities with pictures, movies, simulations come handy.
Another advantage I think of is the searchability. Fulltext material makes every single word searchable…
Then we have to think about the students. An e-book accessable 24/7 to an unlimited number of simultaneous users as a coursebook for free! Then the course reading list can refer to chapters instead of whole books so we can provide the students with only the best reading from multiple authors = educate them in reflective (critical) reading and show them that there isn´t only one true picture of the reality. Wouldn´t that be a competitive advantage in recruiting students?
Well, we all know about their struggle to finance their studies…
And the new forms of blended learning (e-learning) through different LMS (Ping-Pong) will certainly be supported by a great collection of high quality e-books.
May 29th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
[...] har diskuterat e-boksläsaren Kindle på denna och på bibliotekets blogg. Den som vill se den överraskande insidan av Kindle kan göra det på [...]