As a virtually-based marketing agency, we tend to embrace investment in, and adoption of, new technology wherever it can improve people’s lives.
So when we heard that a prep school in Massachusetts was dropping a cool half-mil on flat screens, laptop carousels, e-readers and a full-blown cafe for their library, we thought, “Good for them! Way to give your students a cutting-edge place to learn.”
But here’s the rub: they’re chucking all the books.
And why not? The future is digital, Cushing Academy says. Books are a dying technology. Nobody’s checking them out of the library anymore. We need to upgrade or be left behind!
Only this is a ridiculously short-sighted decision on the part of the school’s administration, for many reasons. A few of them:
- Some books aren’t free on the e-reader, meaning students may be relegated to reading books on computer screens (try doing 100 pages of Modern Lit reading on your iMac).
- Large, richly colored art history books can no longer be paged through and appreciated.
- Discovering interesting reading for enjoyment or research in the way that only a library allows becomes next to impossible.
- Just because fewer people are checking out books doesn’t mean no one needs/looks at them. Though its advocates rave that the Kindle is just like reading a paper book, it’s hard to imagine stumbling upon an interesting-looking title by chance and being drawn in by it.
To be sure, Cushing should absolutely be adopting the new technology. But the most basic question is this: when the tech you’re investing in (e-readers and flatscreens) takes up so little space, why do you need to get rid of the books at all? Isn’t there room to have both? Would it kill you to have a few stacks around the periphery? (Shit, you hung onto microfiche for at least 15 years after it was obsolete, didn’t you?)
Moreover, couldn’t a digital future integrate these two technologies, rather than dismissing one for the other? Couldn’t Cushing build a network that links websites, Kindle books and blogs on one side with relevant books, magazines and newspapers on the other?
Maybe. Maybe not. It’s hard to focus on the issue right now, since my laptop’s making my eyes burn.
Time to power down and pick up a good book…
via Josie Leavitt.
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