TheLen

The theoretical and practical readings for this week dovetailed quite nicely as the authors in the theory section (particularly David A. Bell) addressed many of my concerns with the examples and discussions in the “practice” section. I appreciate the convenience, efficiency and potential environmental advantages of digital books, but I share many of the concerns Bell discussed — particularly eyestrain, searching instead of reading, distractions, and the different processes of reading digital versus paper books.

Technological advances (such as “LIBRIe” and “electronic ink”) should be able to better reproduce the traditional reading experience without the costs of paper books, but are still a distant solution. There is great potential for the future digitization of libraries and scholarships, but given how much we have discussed the issue, I was surprised to see that no one (please point me to the articles/quotes if I’m wrong) discussed the archival dangers of the “inevitable” shift away from paper books and journals.

So, do we have to re-train ourselves to read digital scholarship? How will we adjust our reading habits to the ever-changing formats and conventions of online scholarship? Will we have to learn to ignore hyperlinks (as we must ignore some footnotes) to better follow an author’s argument? Or, will arguments themselves transform to reflect the fragmentation of reading as hyperlinks, images, and the like pull readers away from the traditional argumentation structure?

David Westbrook’s, “From Hogan’s Alley to Coconino County: Three Narratives of the Early Comic Strip”, and James Castonguay’s “The Spanish-American War in US Media Culture” highlight the many advantages and disadvantages of online scholarship. Both authors have well-reasoned and -supported arguments, but while reading their articles, I found myself almost obsessively clicking the links, images, movies, etc. and drifting away from the core of the article. Although these tangents were very interesting and informative, when I finished “reading,” I wasn’t completely sure of what I had read — what were they arguing? what were the articles about? how do they relate to other scholarship? — and this disjointed, often over-stimulating, reading experience is the primary flaw of such digital scholarship. However, with more discipline, I could have followed both the tangents and the argument (opening links, etc. in different windows or tabs) and this ability to control the reading experience is a tremendous advantage of digital scholarship. If I read either of these articles in a paper journal, I would not have seen the rich layers of primary sources and scholarly debate conveyed through the hyperlinks.