Digital Libraries: Shifting the Landscape,
by Glen Bull and Martha Sites, is an
article that brings focus on the topic of digitizing books. Digitizing books basically means to
have a digital, “electronic ink” version of a book on a device (such as the
Kindle) rather than a physical, ink copy.
This article makes the argument that because of the many advantages of
digitized books and their fast-growing popularity, we may be looking at the
beginning of the end of printed books.
One advantage mentioned is that
digital copies of books have “equal-to-print readability and multidevice
integration”– meaning that we can access the book from many different devices. (Bull
& Sites, 2009) The article also mentioned something that I found to be
pretty interesting: a device such as the Kindle has a built in speech option
that reads a book aloud, which is used to help people with poor vision or help
students focus by listening. I do
not think I would encourage students to use this option, because I think that
reading is an important activity for students. I do, however, think that digital books are going to be very
prevalent in our future, especially within education. I mean, look at our class – all of our readings are
online! No need to buy an
expensive book that will be out of date by next semester when we can just read
up to date, digital information! I
think this will be catching on in elementary and high schools as well and I
plan to use them in my classroom one day.
It would allow my students to access their books from many different
places without having to carry around a heavy book, and it also saves the
school a lot of money because there is no need to purchase printed books that
go out of date usually by the time they hit the classroom.
To summarize, this article
highlights the growing use of digitized books in society today and predicts
that printed books are on their way out. One great example related to education that the
article mentioned was that University of Virginia is removing printed copies of
50,000 volumes from their library and will be accessing digitized copies from
Google Books in order to create the “library of the future”. More and more schools will be
doing this and I look forward to seeing what is to come in education with the
use of technology.
Kimberly Taron
Citation Information
Bull, G., & Sites, M. (2009). Digital libraries: Shifting the landscape. Learning and Leading with Technology , 37(1), 13-14. Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-august-2011.aspx
Hi Kimberly
ReplyDeleteDo you feel that the article is dated? It is amazing how the e-book technology penetrated our lives. Now we can buy a Kindle for $79.00 (I don’t have one) or an I-Pad (I have one). I like books, but my friends that have a Kindle have one concern: once they buy the book, they don’t know the title or the name of the author.
Back in 1998 somebody that was working for Barnes and Nobles contacted my husband to start building the electronic library. To do that in Mexico was a good idea, shipping the books to be scanned was cheap and labor was cheap. He was doing that for a while, he even scanned the Washington Post and the New York Times.
I saw this industry when it was just an idea… It amazes me how far it is going!!
Kimberly,
ReplyDeleteThe fact that someone has come up with a way to have textbooks at your fingertips and not in print is factination and money saving. I have found the Kindle to be a blessing to me and my daughter. We read nightly, however, she likes to read on her own too. The use of the voice activation is a benefit because kids still read and follow along, plus have the choice of somebody reading to them. This has helped my daughter tremendously. You mentioned that the article states textbooks are on their way out, and I believe that to be true. I too, cannot wait to see what lies ahead in the world of technology and textbooks.
Thanks,
Conni~