"So far as I can tell, browsing long-form texts online is harder for undergrads than browsing a shelf of print books. I experienced this myself just yesterday. While preparing for a Friday morning class introducing first year students to the idea of finding and using primary sources to develop a research question, I found myself frustrated by one very small selection of e-books that we have that includes primary sources from the Middle Ages. For the novice, they are virtually unusable. You have to guess whether books are going to be useful, open them one at a time, and scan through the contents to see if any of them might be relevant to a particular topic, which is difficult to determine because the authors and words in the titles of the entries are entirely unfamiliar. Yes, you can search the full text, but novices have a difficult time knowing what words might yield results. Trying to guess what words used in a 12th century text is even trickier. The kind of browsing that works for them--flipping pages, sampling contents, comparing texts side-by-side--seems to be simply easier with printed texts. And to make it even easier, we're putting them all together onto one shelf for the students. After all, the point of the assignment isn't to learn how to find books in the stacks, it's to query primary sources. They'll have an opportunity to find their own books as they develop an answer to their research question."I like the concept of e-books, but until they overcome this difficulty, for most users, especially students, and my particular interest of primary and secondary school students, despite the hype, print books still have an important role to play and should have a large and prominant place in the library collection and its ongoing development.
I must credit the wonderful moonflowerdragon who first located the referenced article and discussed the main topic of the article so interestingly on her wonderful blog. I find her blog to be a cornucopeia of fascinating articles, intriguing questions and a great inspiration.
