Digital Skills #5

For some it Pays to blog

Now we should all find great sollace in a huge windfall Christian Lander’s widely read blog, Stuff White People Like, received. His insane amount of visitors and comments instigated a book deal with Random House. Amazing.

Dangerous Communication

London is combatting the dangers of texting while walking by giving pedestrians a cushion on the perilous lamp posts. I can see the combo of walking and texting as a dangerous one, especially since just walking is dangerous in large cities. I wonder how many problems the e-readers are causing. I have seen my husband get pretty involved while reading his (even while watching a movie!). But there is one documented case where an e-reader saved an avid bookie. This poor guy was about to get evicted because his plethora of books became a fire hazard.Other crazy people get academic while driving. Maybe not a good idea.Getty Image 

Wal-Mart’s Wrath

Looks like it’s not just the music industry calling fowl on Wal-Mart’s business practices. Border’s announced plans to sell because of diminished returns. It’s one thing when cherished mom-and-pop bookstores close, but what are we saying about our current economic market when these mega stores close? Are we to only buy from Amazon? Scary!

And now Barnes & Noble is looking into possible purchasing Borders.

Assignment

The five posts below have to deal with an Assignment for my Digital Media Literacy class.

Introduction

Technological enhancements have revolutionized how society acquires the majority of its media content. In this digital age, it is the desire of the masses to have access to large amounts of digital information. Electronic book (e-book) technology offers another platform for readers. Is digital literacy universally high enough to warrant an upcoming trend towards readers and do they, in the end, offer what the bound book cannot? 

Best-selling authors talk about the new platform (“storefront”) to sell their titles:

Background

Technological enhancements have already revolutionized how society acquires the majority of its media content. Many people now learn digitally from a combination of personal blogs and other alternative media. In the case of newspapers, the average person reads print and online news very differently. Digital reading encourages quick and fragmented examination, just allowing enough time for the reader to obtain a brief summation and move on. Similarly, most electronic book (e-book) readers use search functionality to virtually skim the text for relevant information. Content delivery is increasingly fragmented and may hinder scholarship. But in this digital age, increased access to digital information is desired. With the move toward advanced technologies, Winter (2007) suggests “the book as we know it is in a state of flux…even if books remain the same, reading has already changed” (p. 1). This topic is of great importance as understanding the way people learn can change the landscape of academia and can also have far-reaching implications for communicators. This paper will touch upon pivotal research on both e-books and bound books to see how learning has changed and how it will further evolve in the future.

E-book technology is not new: “an initial wave of enthusiasm for e-books lured a number of large commercial publishers into setting up electronic publishing divisions in the heady times of the dot.com era…(b)ut the hopes for an early booming market never materialized” because proprietary format issues made e-book files incompatible between dedicated readers (Thatcher, p. 130). According to Orsdel and Born (2002), electronic journals (e-journals) enjoyed instant popularity; in 1994 there were fewer than 75 peer-reviewed journals online, in 2002 75% of Science Citation Index titles were online. Because this popularity was thought to spill over into e-books, “little thought had been given to the user needs for, or user reactions to, the e-book. It was made available because it could be made available” (Armstrong and Nicholas, 2006, p. 3). Publishers and technology companies haphazardly pieced together content and products without understanding their implications.

Analysis

Taken together, the research shows a continued interest in utilizing and exploring e-books while maintaining use of bound books. However, steps need to be put in place before a streamlined process is readily enjoyed. The usefulness of both formats “requires active management and continual vigilance” of publishers, researchers, and librarians (Lynch, 2003, p. 151). Many researchers are concerned that the aggressive digitization of books diminishes the ability to create a standard process to move forward. Others are wary scholastic advances will be lost if the benefits that are available with technology are not exploited. The lack of a definitive strategy for e-books currently has crippled both scholars and publishers. There is a great need to create a new paradigm that will work in the new “digital environment (as it) is both a transforming and an uncertain” time (Steele, 2002, p. 13).

There are multiple issues that still need to be addressed before e-books are the standard for all research. However, the digital revolution is here and in the end, the chosen method will have a decided impact not only on the way information is transmitted, but also how scholarship is created and studied.  Everett (2005) sees the technology requiring an entire new set of skills for scholars and that “ultimately we will reach a point at which a critical mass of research materials is more readily available electronically than in print” (p. 602). This digital divide will need regulations and guidelines to give legitimacy to content.

Pioneers in digital education are already on board with the revolutionary change. Vail’s Unified School District has an entirely paperless curriculum while a “quarter million commuter students at the University of Phoenix (have) the option of using 100% digital texts” (Reid, 2005, p. 1). Weissinger (2004) quotes Andrew Odlyzko, “(t)o handle the information needs of the future, we will have to use electronic forms of information” but will this start what Weissinger fears will be a “decline in critical thinking”(pp. 248-249)? Birkerts (1994) has reveled in books since his youth and describes the problems with content proliferation that “quantity is elevated over quality” (p. 72).

Where are books headed?

As technologies improve readings materials, the results could look more of an amalgamation of book publishing and library services. Collaboration and guidelines will help aid the transition to pure digital materials. After issues of preservation and standardization are addressed, readers will enjoy the benefits of readily accessible digital resources. Aided by technology, communication media transformed and now consists of blogs and wikis. The same metamorphosis is a natural progression to bound books as readers now seek out more interactive resources. Although e-book usage mimics the fragmented use of other digital resources, the inherent benefit of digital books cannot be denied. E-books can only enhance scholarship, as the proliferation of data is essentially limitless. Innovative groups such as the Arizona school systems will force publishers to collectively agree on standardization that will reinforce the promising future of the digital book. Further research specifically covering how people use digital materials, will aid in future developments to fully maximize the utility e-books provide.

References

This is a list of relevant materials I will likely use in my final project:

Appleton, L. (2004). The use of electronic books in midwifery education: The student perspective. Health Information and Libraries Journal, 21, 245-252. Armstrong, C. & Nicholas, D. (2006). SuperBook: planning for the e-book revolution. Update, 5(11).  

Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (2002). Authors in electronic publishing. Worthing, UK: ALPSP.

Birkerts, S. (1994). The Gutenberg elegies: The fate of reading in an electronic age. New York:Ballantine.

Brisco, S. (2007). E-books get a rewrite. School Library Journal. Retrieved from March 10,2008, 2007 from http://web.lexis-nexis.com.proxy.library.jhu/universe/printdoc

Cloonan, M. V. & Sanett, S. (2005). The preservation of digital content. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 5(2), 213-237.

Connaway, L. S.  (2003). Electronic books (e-books): Current trends and future directions. Bulletin of Information Technology, 23(1), 13-18.

Everett, G. (2005). Electronic resources for Victorian researchers—2005 and beyond. Victorian Literature and Culture, 33, 601-614.

Felluga, D. F. (2006). The Victorian archive and the disappearance of the book. Victorian Studies, 48(2), 305-319.

Hecker, T. E. (2003). The twilight of digitization is now. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 35(1), 52-62.

International Digital Publishing Forum (2006). Ebook User Survey 2006. New York.

International Digital Publishing Forum. (October 30, 2006) New Digital Book Standard Released: Software Companies and Publishers Announce Implementation Plans.International Digital Publishing Forum press release. Retrieved March 3, 2008 from        http://www.idpf.org/pressroom/pressreleases/ocf1.0.htm

Kittler, F. (2002). The perspective of print. Configurations, 10(1), 37-50.

Korat, O. & Shamir, A. (2007). Electronic books versus adult readers: Effects on children’s emergent literacy as a function of social class. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23(3), 248-259.

Littman, J. & Connaway, L. S.  (2004). A circulation analysis of print books and e-books in an academic research library. <Library Resources & Technical Services, 48(4), 256-262.

Lynch, C. A. (2003). The coming crisis in preserving our digital cultural heritage. Journal of Library Administration, 38(3/4), 149–61.

Orsdel, L. V. & Born, K. (2002, April 15). Periodicals price survey 2002: Doing the digital flip. The Library Journal.

Reid, C. (2005, May 30). E-books go to school. Publisher’s Weekly.

Steele, C. (2002). Digital publishing and the knowledge process in scholarly communication in the digital era. Paper presented at the 19th Conference on Library Automation of Universities and Colleges, Taiwan, China.

Thatcher, S. G. (2007). The future of scholarly book publishing in political theory. PS: Political Science & Politics, 129-132.

Weissinger, T. (2004). The new literacy thesis: Implications for librarianship. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 4(2), 245-257.

Winter, J. (2007). The future of books. Time Out. Retrieved from March 8, 2008 from  http://web.lexisnexis.com.proxy.library.jhu/universe/printdoc

Xia, J. (2006). Electronic publishing in archaeology. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 37(4),   270-287.