Cushing Academy is getting rid of its physical books. Now, books will only be available to students online through a Kindle reader. According to an article in the Boston Globe, James Tracy, Cushing Academy headmaster, views books as outdated technology, like a scroll before the book. People who are opposed to this move have expressed concerns about access– that each student must invest in a Kindle reader, and that not all books are available through the Kindle, a proprietary device. Other expressed concerns have included the durability of the equipment, as well as the comfort and ease of reading a novel on an e-reader. My view is that institutions of education should embrace new technologies and add them to the mix of learning tools to foster rich learning experiences. This would include piloting and testing their effectiveness and determining how pedagogy and research assistance fits in with such a device. Then, to partner with educational technology experts, librarians, engineers, students, and open-source experts to pilot related initiatives. Now, I do agree with Mr. Tracy that new technologies should be exploited. And I personally believe that e-readers will be the near-future norm for a student’s preferred learning device (over the mobile or laptop). However, until a robost e-reader device is available using open-source platforms and until more research and development has gone into designing teaching and learning experiences for e-readers, and until an institution has a comprehensive plan to provide research support through an e-reader, I would not get rid of the entire paper book collection.
I’m with you — there is certainly a place for new technologies in modern libraries, and we should be experimenting with e-readers, mobile devices, etc. But I was appalled to see in that article that the Cushing Academy library has done away with their book collection. It feels very short-sighted, owing to many of the issues you mentioned (proprietary devices, limited numbers of available titles, etc.). I would argue that the book is not outdated technology — at least, not yet, and not until the aforementioned issues with e-readers are resolved in a satisfactory way. Cushing’s current plan inherently reduces the number of works that will be available to their students (unless they are certain that EVERY book previously in their library is available in electronic format, which I am sure is not the case). This is not an acceptable situation. If I were the parent of a student there, I think I’d threaten to remove my child from the school, in favor of an educational institution that actually valued history’s printed words.
A lot of people seem to think that e-books just appear, magically, without having been part of an actual scanning program. Sure, a lot of the new bestsellers are also automatically in Kindle format. But nonfiction? Encyclopedias? Older fiction? Not necessarily.
And getting rid of the book collection is getting rid of an investment built up over many years. So you’re throwing away money, in a sense.
I don’t doubt that in the future we’ll all read over Kindle-like devices. But for right now, when the Kindle is $400, and there’s no guarantee the books you want are published in online format, and many book readers have locked-down and punitive DRM — getting rid of all print books is short-sighted, and doesn’t show a very good grasp of all the issues.
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