Interesting article at the NY Times today, this gets at the heart of it:
Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.
Also, check out this video which sums it up quite nicely.
I personally read a lot, both on and offline. I love the quick at hand, wide breadth of information of the web, and I love the leisurely pace of reading offline. As a member of that bridge generation who can still remember when computers weren’t connected to the internet (but can’t quite remember a world without computers), it seems like “kids today” would rather read almost anything that’s on a screen rather than a book, but my sample size is pretty small.
Anyone out there have observations they would like to share regarding online vs offline reading?
Comment By: Brenda Hough
July 29th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
This is interesting! Thanks for pointing to the article and video, Liz. Two things I wonder about…
– if a child DOES read a lot of print books, is it in any way detrimental? If they choose to be a bookworm rather than spending much time online, is that going to hold them back professionally, socially, etc?
– what about audio books? Do they count as reading?
Comment By: Diana Weaver
July 30th, 2008 at 4:34 am
Like the mom in the video, I like to curl up in my favorite chair with a book for a relaxing read. But like the son, I absorb tons of information quickly and easily from the web. Both involve using reading skills. So where does this leave librarians? Is our value only to the mom and not to the son?
I thought you might enjoy this email I got from my brother who is getting his doctorate in computer science at KU. We had been discussing how he does his research in a field where information updates at a rapid pace:
“Here is an example of a link to an author’s web page to find a copy of an article in a journal. The author is Ales Ude, and the citation is: Trajectory generation from noisy positions of object features for teaching robot paths. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 11(2):113-127, 1993.
I did a google on “Ales Ude” and found his web site at: http://www.cns.atr.jp/~aude/publications/
If you go there, you’ll see the particular article I was looking for is not there, but there are pdf files for quite a few journal articles. It might not be there because it is so old. I am trying to get it through Illiad.
By the way, I am trying to read 34 articles for a project. I did find it easier to request them through Illiad, than try to find them on the web. So, I guess we still need librarians!!!”