Contributed by: Rob Shields, Henry Marshall Tory Chair,
University of Alberta
The year 2020 witnessed the withdrawal of millions of copies
of books from library circulation.
Universities that had agreed to allow Google to scan books released
searchable copies of those books in lieu of loaning printed editions. The claim is that copyright law forced this
Damocles choice between print and digital.
While the pandemic has seen the closure of libraries, digital copies
held collectively as Hathi Trust won out as a way of providing access to
millions of students since last March.
Not only were stacks closed but reading rooms and facilities were
shuttered or available on a strictly limited basis.
However, there is no clear plan on how to return to the
previous status quo, which would involve withdrawing that digital access. Reading on screens seems to have won out over
paper, even if expert opinion suggests that paper allows better retention and
deeper reading. For students skimming
texts and those who are required to read specific sections, the digital
solution may work well. However, for
those actually studying the texts, reading multiple volumes or comparing
editions, it is difficult to read at such length with thoroughness on limited
acreage of even multiple computer screens.
E-readers remain cumbersome and formats are obsessively engineered to
prevent copying locked images of pages rather than note-taking or prioritizing
a fluid reader experience.
My librarian suggested printing out pages or buying personal
copies but this transfers a significant expense to the student. Students pay significant tuition and fees
that they expect to include library access.
To be fair, digital formats provide some shortcuts: it is possible to
search the texts for just the keywords one is interested in. Any digital text can data mine for a term
such as “race”, extracting relevant sentences long overlooked by previous
generations of scholars. Yet, the
coordination of the eye with the hand on the page; the sense of where “halfway”
is in a book or that one is getting to the end; the ease of underlining, or the
delight of finding previous readers’ insights in the margins are lost to
us. Indeed, students do not curl up with
an e-book. Rather one is too often fixed
at a computer screen in a fatiguing position.
As part of the elimination of the “campus experience”, the
withdrawal from circulation of a significant proportion of library books throughout North America changes the nature of the University and of scholarship in the
humanities. Anyone dealing with texts,
such as historical books or the works of a major writer, faces new challenges
in getting to understand the author’s output in the original format it was
intended. It is hard to imagine reading
Sartre’s Being and Nothingness or nineteenth century classics
thoroughly, critically and comparatively without having access to bound
versions. Many of these texts are
miserable digital experiences. Compare
reading Little House on the Prairie online and as a book.
“Digital reading” requires much more effort and concentration. The distraction of memes and short text alternatives such as Facebook just
a window away is always tempting. This
also suggests that what we pass on in our culture has just shifted as some
works will fare better on a laptop than others.
As a culture, we are losing the book, in the same way perhaps that the
Chinese lost the ink scroll that unrolls to display text and images in an order
that was carefully choreographed.
Scholars may mourn now. The
experience of reading and of studying has changed in ways that we will be examining
for years.
As the bricks and mortar college shifts online, the social
elements of academia are forced to move elsewhere. Bars, clubs, fraternities and student
societies perhaps? There are new
challenges to “meeting at the library” that dwarf the shushing of librarians of
old. That is, the library and books were
never just intellectual or about ideas.
They were social environments and objects that could be shared and whose
pleasures bound people of like mind together.
Because humans are intrinsically social, students and research will find
other venues and opportunities for exchange.
As a result, universities and their libraries are ceding place to other
sites and institutions. This will
diminish their relevance for their hold on the development of ideas and
attitudes. Much as we have witnessed
many churches closed and sold, so we might anticipate the same for institutions
of higher learning. Do we dare imagine
the changes that such a shift to the digital entails? No matter what happens, our libraries and
universities have adapted to pandemic policies in ways that will change us for
ever.
