Introduction to the Blog

This blog is going to focus on two main topics:

1. What are e-books, and how will they affect the traditional print book industry?

2. How has the digital age affected children’s reading skills, and reading in general?

Introduction

Nothing in recent history has solicited the emotional response that is generated from this statement: reading and books are a dying art. The oft-heard argument that the Internet is causing the death of the printed word, and is responsible for the degeneration of reading habits amongst children and young adults creates a sentimental and defensive reaction from most people. In fact, it has even become “fashionable” to defend the honour of the printed book. Do a search on the Internet for “death of the book”, and one will find passionate defenses of the longevity and everlasting endurance of the book – but will find an equal number of articles, reports, and blogs that say baloney! The book is a dying breed and we’d best be prepared for it. One writer’s blog states, “I am convinced that we are only one device away from a digital publishing tsunami (this is from an executive of a major publishing company: In fact, read Michael Hyatt's blog as well as the comments on his blog for a well-rounded and educated discussion on the future of electronic books).

In contrast is another well-educated opinion from the Administrative Dean of Information at Columbia International University (Columbia, South Carolina). He argues that from an academic point of view, nothing yet replaces the printed word.

In addition to electronic formats, faculty and students must still rely on a well-stocked collection of paper books and periodicals for adequate access to thorough, balanced, credible, in-depth and durable information.

Most arguments that you find online aren’t coming from overzealous, traditionalist bookworms nor from techno-savvy, futuristic industrialists – they are reasonable, thoughtful and intelligent musings from leaders in both the publishing and electronics industry.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

This discussion question has an activity component to it! Search “death of the book” on Google. What do you find? Which “side” presents a better argument?

A Little Bit of Perspective

This is not the first time the demise of a sacred institution such as the book as been anticipated. Similar apocalyptic predictions in history have been made when a new technology or trend seems poised to replace an old one. In “Reading in a Digital Age” the phrase from The Hunchback of Notre Dame is given:

“Ceci tuera cela”

This simply means “This will kill that” where a scholar, holding up a book in front of the Notre Dame Cathedral, was stating that the book will cause the demise of the institution of the church.

Other paranoid reactions to inventions and other cultural progressions have abounded throughout history. Catherine Sheldrick Ross in “Reading in a Digital Age” states other “gloomy predictions” such as

“the alphabet will kill human memory…the photograph will kill painting, the telephone will kill the art of letter writing [do we not hear that about email?], film will kill live theatre..." the list goes on from there.

Think back to when you have heard dire predictions about new technologies that have emerged - particularly warnings about the death of libraries and books in the age of the Internet. These are broad, rash statements that usually have little basis in fact or reality.

Will the digital age really mean the death of books, libraries, and perhaps even reading itself? The tempered reply is: No, it will not cause the immediate demise of anything. However, it may be poised to redefine the role of the library, the configuration of the publishing industry, and may impact people’s reading habits. This is not necessarily bad news, but it would be foolish to dismiss the e-book and the digital age and say that there will be no effect whatsoever in society.

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Reading as a Sacred Act

One of the main arguments against the demise of the traditional book is that the electronic book cannot recreate the same sensory satisfaction that a printed book can. “The Gutenberg Elegies” describes it euphorically as:

“the sensory engagement with the physical book, touching its binding, turning its pages, inhaling its smell; the way fiction can draw you into a world so that you take up residence in it and it inhabits you long after you close the physical pages of the book…a book is solitude, privacy; it is a way of holding the self apart from the crush of the outer world.”

An amusing article in Library Journal has the author writing as if he is in 2009, and has just received a “personal digitizer” to digitize his home library. What relief to finally get rid of the clutter of books! The worst part about moving, he says, is having to move all those books and Ikea bookshelves with him. However as he begins to really consider his book collection, he gets a bit misty-eyed:

As I begin to digitize our library, though, I realize that I always loved living with books. They decorated our walls in their multicolored and multisized bookcases and their own varieties of size, shape, and color. They entertained, too.
Yes, what I'll really miss when the books are gone is the heft and shape and feel of them. The way they smell. I'll miss discovering scraps of paper or marginal notes left by other readers, or rediscovering my own highlights in a text or history book or novel. It is fun, and often surprising, to see what I thought was important enough to mark in the pages of a book, to deface it, two or three decades ago.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

Is it possible to have this same “sensory engagement” with a digital book?

E-Books: Ready to Take Off Again?

In 2006, there is renewed interest and optimism surrounding the future of e-books. There are several reasons why.

Portable devices are getting lighter and the quality better. The text on some of the new devices including The Sony Reader are as sharp as in print. There is a greater selection of digital books as well which ultimately increases the salability of e-books and their devices.

In a BusinessWeek Online article from February 2006 a literary agent argued that the future of e-books is here, now.

Every other form of media has gone digital – music, newspapers, movies…we’re the only industry that hasn’t lived up to the pace of technology. A revolution is around the corner.

Major players in the digital world have the potential to dramatically influence the e-book’s future. Google’s digitization project of millions of books (copyrighted or not) is helping to build a “digital warehouse” for recreational reading and research. HarperCollins Publisher is going to create a digital store of all of its publication (25,000 or more titles) that will be sold over the Internet.

In 2006, Amazon will be offering a digital version of every book it offers in print. These are huge indicators that the success of e-books is indeed, already beginning.

E-Books and Children

One might expect that the best target audience for an e-book would be children or teens. Going on the assumption that this demographic group has the most potential to be competent with this technology, publishers have attempted to create e-books of popular novels. One example is the third book in Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series, “Princess in Love”. Available through Amazon and other online vendors, “Princess in Love” is available in various ebook formats for as low at $5.95 U.S. (see http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/130612-ebook.htm) with free downloading of the ebook reader, Palm Reader. Amazon.com offers “Princess in Love” for $5.95 U.S. as well, and offers a free download of Microsoft Reader.

Has it been successful? Quite simply, the answer is no. The reasons are varied.

One of reasons is because of the complexity of the technology. Readers need to be downloaded and system requirements are strict as to what can be downloaded where. E-books as a rule are encrypted by the publisher to disallow printing. So the only place for a purchaser to view their e-book is on the computer.

But the main reason why e-books haven’t been hugely popular among the younger set is the same reason why adults haven’t been quick to embrace e-books: it is still easier and more convenient to read a book in print than on the computer. As librarian Cindi Carey, Lacey Branch, Timberland Regional Library, WA. stated in a Library Journal article from 2003, “people want the tactile experience of reading a book."

There is growing concern as well for the amount of time that children already spend on the computer, and the physical effects of this activity on the still-maturing eyes of a child. But that concern could apply to all computer users regardless of age. Even high resolution computers cannot provide a 3-dimensional experience that a book does. The computer screen does not bend and fold nor can you as easily adjust distance between the words and your eyes as you can with a book. Tactile and emotional experiences aside, a book on a computer is quite simply a more physically demanding experience on the eyes, body, and even the brain.

There is even a syndrome coined for excessive computer use – computer vision syndrome. The statistics are already high for the number of children who need corrective lenses because – experts believe – of eye strain due to extensive computer use. This may significantly slow the promotion of e-books to children.

So who is the real market for e-books? Despite the physical concerns, some see children younger than grade three as the most promising audience for e-books. Together with read-alouds, animations, and shorter texts, the picture e-book industry may offer a larger experience for children than the print format.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION

Have you made use of any child-related e-book technologies?

Second question: Are you aware of any children or teens who have downloaded and read an e-book? Can you see youth being interested in this technology?

A Unique Summer Reading Program

The Prince Edward Island Provincial Library Service offered an electronic book summer reading club in 2005. Children are able to access books (for children up to age 10) online for free, but must have Adobe Acrobat Reader on their computer to download the book.

Please read the attached article on this unique summer reading program initiative.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

The Minister of Community and Cultural Affairs states in the article, “it is our hope that this program…will help to build a life long love of reading among young people”. Does a lifelong love of reading have to develop from the book, or can a passion for reading develop from reading online?

Children and Reading

The research report, "Reading in a Digital Age" discusses two primary concerns regarding children and reading in an Internet age:

1. Children are less proficient at reading and have shorter attention spans because of their involvement with technological toys and tools.

2. Children are distracted by technology and other entertainment and as a result are not reading as much as they used to.

Reports as early as 1990 discussed the ways in which learning and reading via electronic media differs from reading text. Author Jane Healy states:

“the capacity for reading sustained text is being threatened by competition from visual media…the ability to pursue the development of an idea, step by step in a logical chain of reasoning, through sentences and paragraphs – is an outgrowth of the linearity of print.”

Both Jane Healy and researcher Sven Birkert (both cited in "Reading in a Digital Age" say that because of the technology of television and the computer (primarily), children can no longer sustain interest in long narratives or texts with deeper meanings. Their attention span is so short and their work so fragmented between different media that children are both unable and unwilling to read anything longer and intellectually more challenging.

Healy and Birkert were writing before the advent of even more fragmented communication and reading tools were introduced; namely, messenger systems and Internet searching. One need only observe a youth on email, chat, or instant messaging to see that their communication methods are fragmented sentences and partial ideas, and often it is occurring at the same time as reading other texts online or in print. No activity occurs on its own anymore. How, then, does this affect a child’s ability to read good, old-fashioned text?

Conversely, Healy and Birkert also write that the degeneration of reading has been occurring for centuries. Going back to the eighteenth century, before mass publication of books, people read and reread the same text (e.g., the Bible). With the proliferation of literature as mass production occurred came works of lesser quality (an early Harlequin romance, if you will). The “deep reading” of earlier texts was replaced by “superficial reading” where each text was essentially a replication of the text before it and required little intellectual thought or analysis.

So - one could also argue that the decline of “reading” has been occurring for the past couple of centuries, and the Internet with all of its appendices, is just one more factor at play in the erosion of reading skills.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

What have you observed or experienced with regard to a shortened attention span amongst children or young adults?

The Internet Isn’t All Bad…Is It?

One other interesting observation that Linda Gambrell made in her research article, Reading Literature, Reading Text, Reading the Internet is that both children and adults are reading more informational text than before the Internet. The ease of researching information online – being able to “google” a topic, has made people more likely to look up topics of interest.

Gumbrell uses her own example of reading a report of interest online (“Reading at Risk”), then continuing a probe of the topic by looking up related information on the Internet. Her education on the topic was able to continue beyond the initial reading of the report, because of how easy it was to research online. Gumbrell says:

Because I used the Internet, my reading on the topic was broader and I was exposed to multiple interpretations of the report. As a result, my understanding was expanded and enriched, much more so than if I had only read the traditional printed version of [the report she read].

This was an “ah-ha!” moment for Linda Gambrell. The experience she had, ironically, contradicted the report she was reading about. The “Reading at Risk” report does acknowledge the advantage of the Internet for locating information, but the report also argues that the Internet “fosters short attention spans, accelerated gratification, and passive participation”.

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

Now you have heard arguments from both sides of the fence. Which do you agree with? The Internet: a friend or a foe for reading?

Neopets, MSN, and Gameboy...Too Many Technologies...Too Little Time!

Not only do we have the issue of reading skills degenerating, but there is also the concern that children are simply reading less overall because of the distractions of technology – email, Internet, MSN, electronic hand held games, CD-ROM games, Playstations, GameCubes, X-Box, and the list will likely continue to grow as time goes on. This point could be argued with more certainty simply because there isn’t a similar example in history that can compare with the barrage of new technologies, distractions, and stimulations that children now have.

One can deduce with a fair bit of certainty that children are spending more time with various forms of electronic media now than 5 to 10 years ago. The Kaiser Family Foundation is a U.S.-based organization that created a report in 2005 entitled Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year Olds. Some key statistics from their 2005 report are:

86% of children 8-18 years of age have a computer at home.

74% of these children have Internet access.

22% go online for one hour or more per day.

These percentages have risen substantially since Kaiser’s first study in 1999, but appear to be less than statistics gathered for the report, “Young Canadians in a Wired World”, which states that 94% of children have Internet access at home.

What about reading? How much are children still reading? The Kaiser Report is fairly encouraging, stating that nearly 3 out of 4 (73%) of children 8-18 years of age spend approximately 43 minutes per day reading for pleasure. However, the study did find that those students with higher grades (A’s and B’s) spent less time on video games and more time reading than those students with grades of C’s and D’s.

“Young Canadians in a Wired World” discovered that the average young person is spending over an hour a day instant messaging (talking to their friends and/or family online). However, can one state with reasonable certainty that if the Internet did not exist that this time would be spent reading? Or did youth simply find other recreational activities (playing outside with friends, talking on the phone, watching TV, listening to music) to fill their time?

• DISCUSSION QUESTION:

Reading at Risk has statistics that prove grade school and high school students (and indeed all age groups) are reading less than they did 20 years ago. Do you believe this is a result of the distractions of the Internet (and its related activities like email and chat) and electronic games? What other reasons might there be?