For a few years now, A of R has been exploring how artists use libraries (and in turn, how libraries benefit from artists and creative communities.) This seems especially important as we come into a fast evolving online learning focus (either for the long or the short run.) Further, a stress on the importance of print materials, especially true right now, when so much of our collection is inaccessible during quarantine. As easy as electronic materials are to use, so much is available only in print (including my own titles and most poetry unless they have distribution methods that involve electronic --most small publishers don't.) Even, in the rush to accommodate, our textbook reserves had only a few high-use titles that could be ordered as e-books. (Others my co-worker spirited away on her way out the door to scan some chapters for panicked faculty members from home.) There is also the problem that while providers make such content available, you never really own it. Thus, budget cuts, you discontinue, and you don't really have access to anything in the way you did in print. They also tend to be more expensive with less return.
Today, setting up our summer Book to Art club endeavor, the last moving piece of spring focus programming and devoted to The Handmaid's Tale, I went searching for a free electronic version for a re-read. I have a couple of Atwood novels, but not this one (unless it's buried in the cases at the back but I'm pretty sure I initially read a library-owned copy.). As I perused the first few pages of a pdf, how strange I found my experience reading fiction online--how I immediately fell into how I usually read the web for content--scrolling and skimming. I once watched a woman on a train back from Detroit with a kindle who was reading. Only she wasn't really reading because every two minutes, she'd look at her phone, then go back to another 2 minutes of book. Phone, book. Repear. Usually, when I'm reading, I'm commuting, but if what I'm reading is good, I tend to get utterly lost in that 45 minutes or so and have to be careful lest I miss my stop.
There is also something to be said for physical browsing--approaching a shelf of books and paging through them--either choosing what you want to explore further or just skimming for inspiration. This is harder when entering search terms into a database without the physicality of the book there in front of you. One would worry that a pandemic would kill the printed word, but people are still finding their way to printed books--be it via Amazon or curbside pickup at the public library. The e-book thing never caught on like they thought it would, but I wonder if the current state will give it a boost. Over the years, whenever I've asked students if they preferred electronic texts or print, it has overwhelmingly been the latter.
Of course, I say this with an obvious bias. As an author whose books are very tied up in print publishing, and as an editor who makes print books that aren't available elsewhere. Of course, electronic mediums are also advantageous--I've been making more and more older projects available via the web, esp. the ones out of print, which give them new readers and new life. What do we lose in such a format? What do we gain? Has the pandemic pushed print publishing further into the ground, or will people who read books still want, you know BOOKS, even when others cannot understand why everything isn't digital? I don't have answers for these, only preferences.
Way back in 2004, I sat through an AWP panel that talked about how, as digital media rose to prominence, books would become more important as tactile, unique objects. About 15 years ago, someone high up in the college was allegedly quoted as asking why on earth a campus needed a library if everyone was reading on their kindle. For a few years in the late aughts, I'd catch a lot of bus readers with their sleek little tablets, but it seemed the the newness wore off and soon people reading were toting print volumes again. I got a Kindle Fire a few years ago for Christmas and can't say I've ever read a book on it (but I have watched a lot of Netflix.) While CD's died a quick death at the birth of mp3 & streaming technology, readers, those people really into books, are a harder lot to convince. It's been almost two decades since the digital revolution and books are, since the days of the Gutenberg bible, still a thing.
A few days I was laughing over an article about the rise of the bookshelf backed zoom panorama, which seems like it would be hard to pull off if all your books are digital. I am probably guilty of this, since my desk sits with my back to the shelves (less now than before, now it's just a shorter bank of shelves and now, where the others stood, the coat rack.) A house full of books is a sign of life of the mind, I suppose, though books can be ingested in all sorts of ways (some people are really into listening to audio books of late.) But even still, I think the immersion in the world of a book, at least with fiction, is a little less deep electronically than on a screen.
I do take some solace in this--that books are still a thing, that indie bookstores, at least until this current predicament were actually thriving long after places like B&N and Borders nearly killed them. While I don't miss grocery stores or department stores, I do miss bookstores (and, of course, thrift stores.) In a world and a nation that seems to cater to the lowest common denominator and proves stupider every day, it's good to know people are still reading nevertheless.
