[libraries] always a place for the dead tree media

Blogger Xensen has almost finished rebuilding his library and that raises the question, in my mind, of whether we need physical libraries any more. Let me say up front that I feel we do.

Bryan Appleyard took on the might of the digitisphere in early 2007 with his article on the death of the book and replied to the flak thus:

I wrote an article in The Sunday Times about Google's digitisation of the world's libraries. Some - Google included - seemed to think I said this was about to destroy civilisation. This does not fill me with hope about the ability of these people - Google included - to read.

Commenter Mitar is an apostle of the new reading:

I just hope that there will be the day when information will be freely accessible and not limited only to the people who can afford it, which, I believe, will help more developing nations than care for their cultural well-being.

Overall it seems to me that very similar ideas were around when Gutenberg invented movable type. 500 years ago we got books which enabled us to share information and knowledge easier, more rapidly and to regions where this was not possible before.

Now we are at the similar point in our history, we are getting rid of the limits the material nature of the books have and we are going forward. This are steps forward. I think you should enjoy the ride.

I was interested in Mitar's "this are steps forward". Bit more than a typo, methinks. Commenter Jack covered my thoughts about literacy and reading here:

I can say, from the point of view of this librarian at a baccalaureate institution, that it's not the death of the book we should be worried about, it's the death of reading. Like the USA Today newspaper in America that shortened all journalism into two paragraphs, digitising a book gives it to a medium that does not encourage reading, is not designed for reading, and considers reading to be tedious.

It used to be called "sustained reading," a concept teachers promoted to encourage a lifelong appreciation for the written word, and the book was the ultimate device for delving into the understanding of the world. But now Google's push for digital copy will accelerate that death, by moving it to a medium that looks remarkably like a television, and by all accounts acts like one too. Is it any wonder we know so little about our world?

It seems to me that both have a point - the net has certainly freed up information but there are two points which need addressing straight away.

Firstly, commenter Devon said:

You seem to have an overarching assumption that when data is held digitally, it is of a lower form called information. Conversely, when touched by a human mind, this data is risen to a higher form called knowledge. Now, I am likely oversimplifying your views, and I don't wish to be condescending.

Even if we are to simply regard knowledge as either true or useful information, there is absolutely no reason to assume that a human is more likely than an algorithm to reference it until we know more about both the human and the algorithm.

Data held digitally is of no less quality than information on the dead-tree page but there is now a second issue - that the whole aim of the Google digitization, being to make information freely available across the globe, is undercut by the development of the ebook, DRM, the two-tier net and semi-governmental regulatory practices.

About ebooks, L'Ombre says:

Well mostly what we seem to have learned is that there is a demand for ebooks and that if the publisher doesn't meet that demand then others will do so. Furthermore there is probably a continuum. If no ebooks exist then many high quality free versions of popular books will show up, if the publisher sells the ebooks with DRM at high prices then some bootleg copies will occur and if the publisher makes the books available for low cost (and without DRM though it is hard to control for that) then very few if any bootleg copies will be made available.

So we are back to the same old story - that information will again be available for those willing to subscribe to it, i.e. those with the money. The only hope for the less affluent is the public library and for the slightly better off, the slow building of a real library in real space in a real room.

The danger in that, of course, was illustrated in Fahrenheit 451.

In the end, to Mitar's distinction between information and knowledge, can be added a third issue - simple literacy. I hate to say it but the syntactical, grammatical and spelling errors which abound today, even in publications intended for foreign learners of English [and that is mortifying] show how far literacy has slipped in two generations.

UPDATE: You might like to look at Angus Dei's take on the matter.