Print Isn’t Dead…Yet
This week as we have focused on the rising presence of eBooks as viable academic resources, it has been impossible to avoid the controversy and speculation about where the future of our access to information is going.
As a Wake Forest student, I can find a plethora of digitalized journals, books, and encyclopedias all without even leaving my dorm room and walking into ZSR. In terms of convenience and availability, there is no doubt that this method is the victor.
However, with the news of publishers like HarperCollins limiting their eBook circulation, the question must be asked: Is “Print” a thing of the past, or is it the very backbone of our informational capacities?
I must also pose the question: Who has more power over information when it is digitalized, the user or the publisher?
These two questions will drive my commentary in this blog post, as I strongly believe that Print has been and always will be the most universally accessible and consistent form of preserving information.
In terms of all recorded history, not one bit of it was digitalized until the past 30 years. The practice of transcribing and preserving physical copies of works has not failed for thousands of years, as books cannot disappear, cannot be unplugged, and cannot disappear into CyberSpace.
Being a Classics & Latin major I have grown to appreciate the ways in which information and books and transcribed and passed down from antiquity. I fully trust in this system, as I value the importance of having plenty of circulating copies of a work to prolong its life and expand its readership.
Compiling information online is certainly one alternative and a viable way of posting information, but never should we come so dependent on a technology that isn’t tactile or concrete such as the Internet. Print will always be able to survive, and the circulation of books in the world will ensure that this will always be the case. Relying too much on digitalized media puts too much faith into the Internet’s stability and security, while having libraries across the world dedicated to information preservation ensures that information is readily available in the event of an online catastrophe.
Keeping books in libraries and in the hands of the people ensures that we have a physical ownership over the information we possess.
While I am not advocating against current progress in the digital age, I simply advise that we safeguard our information in its most basic form, while spreading our online reach as far as it can go without losing sight of the bookkeeping traditions that led humanity to its current standing.
Online access to information is certainly revolutionizing the way humans learn about the world, but let us not forget our foundation and how most of our information about the human condition was recorded and shared through Print before it even made it to the Internet.
