The title demonstrates a false dichotomy, one right up there with books vs. e-text and dozens of others in this stage of the information age. One can fall off an elephant on both sides, after all.
The specific inspiration for the title comes from a Chronicle Wired Campus blog entry linking to an essay by Robert Johnson, CIO of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Johnson makes a good case that removing books from a library in favor of e-texts and social spaces is a shortsighted strategy. But then he falls off the elephant on the other side by insisting that the screen experience cannot in any way rival the print experience, which is one of great involvement, physical comfort, life-changing depth, and so forth. After awhile, I feel as if I’m watching a Maxwell House commercial, and anyone who knows me knows that I too love books with a mighty love.
But of course I love computers too. Funny how that works. Here I am writing and reading online. Not too long ago I was gently turning the pages of 16th- and 17th-century books in the Duke Humfrey’s Library at Oxford’s Bodleian library. I find both experiences compelling and valuable. I bet I’m not alone. Perhaps this is the issue, or the divide: there are those who have found compelling textual experiences online, and those who have not. My hunch is that Johnson is looking at online reading/writing through the wrong generic lens. It’s the difference between curling up with a novel and reading a blog. Both use writing, and both can be extraordinary, even transformative experiences.
The Chronicle’s blog entry features a long comment from Dartmouth’s Malcolm Brown that offers a very reasonable middle ground. Well worth reading, especially if one wants to stay on the elephant.
Thanks for linking to this. I am actually a graduate of Rhodes and just went to their new library this past weekend. I have to agree with Malcom Brown on the middle ground. I can stare at a computer screen for quite a long time. And I actually find engaging in blog reading, writing, and commenting a very thought-provoking activity. It strikes me that Johnson has never really participated in blogging or other online collaborative activity. I still like reading physical books and I still like visiting people face to face. I like that I can “talk” to people online in the interim between face-to-face gatherings. And I like that when I don’t have time to read a whole book, I have articles and blog entries at my fingertips.
Thanks for that confirmation, Laura, of what seems to me to be the middle way we had better find in higher ed, before our students vote with their feet and get their education elsewhere.
Doesn’t anyone remember the strange, bracing intimacy of a telephone call? When I was growing up, the telephone seemed to get me closer to people, often closer than a face-to-face encounter. The analogy breaks down, as all analogies do, but still: this networked telecommunication has its peculiar rewards and intensities, just as books, movies, records, etc. do.
Thanks Laura – you said it, and I can’t say it better;->
Good post Gardo! Also a good comment from Laura.
I have difficulty accepting Johnson’s arguments as being serious. The piece strikes me as being written only to create a reaction, and I feel as if it were written to create a sensation, not to address the issue seriously. Brown’s response was appropriate and well reasoned.
There are many paths to take.
Thanks for writing about this. I saw it the other day, but it’s taken me a while to get back.
You know, I got intersted in technology (and, specifically using technology as a way to facilitate and improve the way we teach and learn) while working at a rare books library. When I decided at that time that I wanted to pursue this field, I never saw it as a rejection of the vault of books over which I worked. Rather, I saw it as the obvious, and natural extension of that world.
I will never give up my books (heck, I can’t even throw out a back issue of the New Yorker). I will spend much of my daughter’s childhood trying to instill in her the love for language and words that came to me through reading books. But I will also encourage her (and myself) to experience other ways of learning, reading, and, ultimately, growing.
I believe that computers will forever alter the way that in which we absorb, gather, and organize information in our lives, and, ultimately, they will change the way we learn. I am sure of this because books did the same thing once upon a time. That said, why would I assume that books would be “replaced” by this new way of reading (and learning) rather than enhanced and re-contextualized?
Eloquently said, Martha. Amen! (to the part about the New Yorkers, too).
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