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Books: Electronic AND Print, Forever and Ever Amen
December 3, 2007

eBrary, in association with librarians Susan Gibbons of the University of Rochester and Allen McKiel of Northeastern State University, performed an anecdotal (non-scientific) survey of faculty opinions of e-books. You can read the full report after registering at the eBrary SurveyMonkey site.

One of the most interesting findings from my perspective, since it validates something I've been saying for years, is that they overwhelmingly prefer print books  "when reading the whole book or extensive sections." Comments included statements like "e-books are better for research and quick reference, print books better for cover-to-cover reading," and "e-books are easier to search," while "print books are easier to read".

They also preferred, but by a much smaller margin, print books as being "generally easier to use for most of my research." This finding, however, I suspect is a symptom of the relatively small percentage of books that are available as electronic books. As e-books become more widely available this particular finding could reverse. But again, the preference for print when reading the entire book may still factor into this statistic.

I think it's time for e-book advocates to admit that despite the mass digitization projects and the new e-book devices coming out such as Amazon's Kindle, we will continue to need print books. It's not either/or, it's both. Each has it's benefits and drawbacks. TV did not kill radio and neither will e-books kill print books. It's time for us to declare that when it comes to books, electronic vs. print is a false dichotomy. We want both, for different reasons and purposes.

Posted by Roy Tennant on December 3, 2007 | Comments (1)