“Books are no more threatened by

Kindle than stairs by elevators.”

- Stephen Fry

How do I loathe thee?

Let me count the ways…• Harder to read – eyestrain

• Time required to open book, turn pages, find new

section

• Distractions on reading device from Web,

blinking visuals

• More difficult to navigate

• Being tethered to internet

• Inability to write in e-books or flag pages

“E-books smell like burned fuel.” –

Ray Bradbury• Restrictions on # of pages that can be printed

• Inability to cut and paste on some platforms

• Inability to flip between several books at once

• Limited download period

• Some e-books don’t work well across devices

• Images difficult to view

• Difficulty browsing

• E-books are “cold” – feel connected to print books

And if you don’t believe Ray

Bradbury…• “The problem with reading off a screen isn’t

resolution, eyestrain, or compatibility with

reading in the bathtub: it’s that computers are

seductive, they tempt us to do other things,

making concentrating on a long-form work

impractical.” – Cory Doctorow, blogger and

digital rights activist

Where have we heard this before?

• “It is quite likely that vast areas of

publishing…may be largely taken out of the

printed medium. … As a result, the micrographics

[microfilm] industry is growing rapidly…at a rate

of about 18% annually, or roughly three times the

Gross National Product, according to the National

Microfilm Association.” Starr, 1974, quoted in Croft and Davis, 2010

Can e-books replace print in

academia?• Anderson and Pham (2013): Study done in a mid-

size academic library: How many of the library’s

print titles could be acquired in electronic format?

• Only 33% of titles available as an e-book

• Only 26% could be readily obtained

• Consistent with other studies

Differences in comprehension and

retention of material• Same text, both formats: reading comprehension

is better for print (Jabr, 2013).

• Neuroscientists predict that use of the same

devices to read and to tweet/post to Facebook/etc.

will result in atrophy in students’ reading

comprehension skills (Cull, 2011).

Kids (future students) these days!

• Fall 2014: Children ages 6-17 – 65% say they will

always want to read books in print. UP from 60%

in 2012 (Scholastic, 2014).

• When kids’ books have interactive features, kids

tend to skip over the text and play with the

features. (Paul, 2014)

• Feature-rich digital products touted as an advantage

• Prove to be distracting

• Reading comprehension suffers

THE END(FOR NOW)

Ahem…• The number of e-books used at DSC is indeed

twice the number of print books, but the

percentage of use for each collection is the same.

• There is no evidence that online students use e-

books more often than do F2F students. As a

matter of fact, one study shows no difference (Folb,

2011).

• Students do not prefer print because they are

unfamiliar with new interfaces. They prefer them

because they remember what they read on paper

better than what they read on a screen (Silverman, 2014).

• A survey of employers found that for two-year college

educated job applicants, the only desired skill on which

applicants were rated “excellent” was Information

Technology Application. Students know how to use the

devices. What employers want is reading comprehension,

which employers rated “poor” and which suffers when

students read from screens (Conference Board, 2006; Cull, 2011).

• E-books are accessible 24/7 – when the internet is

working and the power is on.

• 60% of students will buy a print textbook even if the

electronic version is free (James Madison University, 2014).

• DSC’s own e-text initiative showed that students only

saved $1.00 on average with e-text vs. print (DeSantis, 2012).

Most e-textbooks are not free.