haptic efficiency
"The online reader expends a great deal of mental energy just navigating. Paper’s tangibility allows the hands and fingers to take over much of the navigational burden, freeing up the brain to think."
William Powers' essay comes close to describing the haptic efficiencies of paper. But notice his list of disadvantages of paper that are actually attributes. The evaluation of paper should not be positioned as an absence of screen attributes.
"In a digital world, paper actually has quite a few limitations: (1) It takes
up physical space; (2) It can only be in one place at a time (virtual media can be
accessed from anywhere); (3) It is difficult to alter or edit; (4) It does not play
moving images or sound; and (5) It cannot network or connect to other media.
The mystery is why a medium with so many disadvantages is still all around us."
The physical space actually enables rearrangement in library organizations, the linear circulation is a premise of slower paced evaluation, the persistence enables scholarly interpretation, the lack of high density, visual content enables economy and durability, and the lack of connectivity is augmented by bibliographic utilities such as the web.
The disadvantage of paper most frequently mentioned is its lack of connectivity and auto-searching. Digital content is self-indexing. The encoding that enables screen presentation also enables searching. But this disadvantage of paper hides an advantage. Because paper cannot self index, it self-authenticates. Which attribute figures in the transmission of culture?
repatriation
Note the diminished
cultural respect extended to print collections in the context of on-line resources. This eclipse is apparent in the lost of status associated with storage of “lesser used’ collections regardless that the print collections are increasingly serving a mastering and back-up role for their screen delivered simulations. Instructional and research agendas are also relegating print to a format obsolescence that does not recognize the exclusive attributes of print. Finally, library services are swayed by service agendas and service metrics that favor digital services at the expense of print.
Such developments demean print and tangible collections in general within a cultural context that privileges digital research and resources. We need advocates for print repatriation.
omnibility
"The emphasis is not on 'mobility' but on permanent connectivity in an environment where computational and communication capacity is increasingly pervasive. What is our world like when the network is not something that is 'out there' but when potentially all that we do is network aware."
Lorcan Demsey
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