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Does Print Still Matter?

May 3, 2007

Not to spoil the plot, but of course print still matters. But electronic content is certainly changing our expectations about reading and the way we think about, and use, print.

This was the topic of a talk I gave the other week at Dominican University as part of the Lazerow lecture series. I always hate listening to speakers predict the future, especially in bibliolibraryland (electronic paper? ebook readers with appeal? wake me up when the shipment arrives.) But this talk was focused on today, or at the most the next six months.

I covered three areas: the growth of user-generated content, how media companies are responding to this shift (and slj.com is a good example), and the "missing guest" at the online feast: books. While this has all been covered elsewhere, I was trying to introduce the perspective of libraries into the mix (Can we think about some blogs as authoritative sources? Should our focus shift to pushing our content out to our users rather than cataloging content that waits for the user? And what does it mean if some of our most important cultural documents are user-generated content?)  Michael Stephens over on ALA's Techsource blog has a full report on the evening.

Part of my inspiration was our cover story last month by Marc Aronson, who argues that nonfiction books for kids will survive if they have a strong narrative and point-of-view. "But a book that conveys an author’s judgments and passions—one that makes clear his or her particular vision, that goes beyond simple précis to provide an in-depth analysis and exploration of a subject—offers something very different than a Web site," Aronson writes. I totally agree, although I don't think it has to be in print....

Imagine how great it would be if textbooks were digital, and the school librarian could create links to nonfiction, fiction, and reference titles in the book, expanding the text? Oh, but that's futuristic day-dreaming, and unfortunately digital rights management would probably never allow it.

It was great to finally see Dominican, which I'd heard so much about over the years. The students (and I like to think they didn't all attend because they were required) had some great questions, especially about how online publications are changing their content based on user metrics (and what implications that has on journalism), and what efforts are underway to preserve original digital content. I told them to write in when they had the answers.   

Posted by Brian Kenney on May 3, 2007 | Comments (8)