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The “National Emergency Library”, the digital divide, and the future of literacy

I was going to wait a little longer before posting this, but then I saw that a number of news sites are now summing the situation up effectively. Here’s a link to NPR’s story, which includes an acknowledgement that they failed to mention the issue of piracy when they initially reported, favorably, on the National Emergency Library last week.

The “emergency” library set up by the Internet Archive is not an acceptable response to the shutdown of practically everything in the wake of the coronavirus; it cheats authors, booksellers, and publishers out of money they’ve earned the hard way. But the response also reveals something about the privilege necessary to be a reader, and, in particular, a reader of ebooks. I find it fascinating that the same people who were totally against ebooks 20 years ago are now evangelizing them, as if they are the great solution to having our bookstores and libraries closed.  Libraries have free access to ebooks, right? Well, not really. What libraries have is expensive access to ebooks. Libraries pay for each ebook license they purchase, much more than they would for a hardcover copy, and can only check out the book a limited number of times before the license expires and they have to get a new one.  The same ebook can only be checked out to one person at a time. The result, unless you live in a community that is willing to empty its pockets and then some to fund a library ebook collection, is that most libraries have limited ebook collections.  I actually do live in one of those communities, and there are still a lot of books that don’t show up when I search them in ebook format.  So yes, libraries can provide “free” access to ebooks, but not all libraries have all ebooks available to their users.

Accessing ebooks also requires technology. It is a privilege to have an ereader, a tablet, or a smartphone to read off of (it’s also a privilege to be able to read off a computer screen but I find it practically impossible) There is a literacy gap, a digital divide, that is uncrossable when the only access to books is electronic and there’s no tangible community space for books to be shared. Those ebooks nearly always exist in some kind of account in the cloud out there so you can find them when you want them.  An account probably means some kind of personal information on file.  For those of us who can’t find what we need in our library’s ebook collection, it is a privilege to be able to afford to purchase ebooks, even on the cheap, and probably the majority of those are purchased through Amazon or read through their app (yes, even library ebooks).

Something like the National Emergency Library exists in part because Brewster Kahle saw an opportunity and grabbed it. Many people assumed it was the same kind of thing as Project Gutenberg, with all the works legally available, because it presents itself as legit. But it becomes popular, in spite of the knowledge that many works are pirated, because reading is a privilege, one many can’t afford.

I think one thing that is becoming increasingly obvious as people  “shelter in place” is how deep the divisions are when it comes to access to even the basics. As all parents have now suddenly become homeschool teachers, the socioeconomic and educational disparities affecting children’s education and their reading skills are going to become more and more evident. I was able to check out a Chromebook from the district for my kids to use to do their schoolwork on remotely, but some kids in other districts are working their way through paper packets.

For those people who have the technology and the funds, this is less of a big deal. But for those who don’t, well, without the necessary technology at their fingertips, we are poised to lose a generation of readers.

There is something inherently wrong with a bookish ecosystem where the majority of writers and booksellers are struggling to keep afloat, libraries are begging for funding, schools are falling apart, access to technology is scattershot, and the people who need  information, help, and books the most are least likely to receive it.  I don’t know how we fix this, but the beginning is recognizing that the surprise creation of the National Emergency Library is not something that needs a one-time fix. It’s a sign of a systemic failure in the bookish community, and that’s bad for all of us.

I am heartened to see the responses of many authors, who are either sharing their own work online or have given others permission to do so, and publishers (here’s a statement from the American Association of Publishers on their response, including education publishers. It’s long and detailed, and completely worth going through).  Great work is also being done by the people who really want to support authors; Jim McLeod of Ginger Nuts of Horror has started a Facebook group for horror authors and publishers with books coming out now called Pandemic Book Launches.  I am so thankful to see members of the bookish community working together to bring people together with books. The current situation has arisen from worldwide emergency, and it’s amazing to see what people are willing to do to make things work, but I don’t think it is sustainable long-term. Where do we go from here, to bridge that digital divide and ensure a future of engaged readers? With the cracks in the system now obvious to everyone, we cannot go back to the way things were.

Posted on March 31, 2020 by , Reply

School’s In Session!

Feeling bored? Need to stretch your brain, but not up to paying to take a full-fledged college class? Here is your chance to look at AMC’s The Walking Dead in a totally new way. The University of California at Irvine is offering a MOOC (that’s a massive open online course) titled “Society, Science, Survival: Lessons from AMC’s The Walking Dead that takes an interdisciplinary look at the show, using concepts from math, public health, and science. These can be intimidating topics but boy, the class sounds fun. If you’d like to learn more about the class, or enroll (it’s free), here’s a link to the webpage for the class, which starts October 14. The new season for the show is October 13, so the timing is perfect for watchers of the show! If you decide to take it, I’d love to hear about the experience, and the resources you end up using!

Posted on September 5, 2013 by , Reply

Is This Really A “Dramatic Advantage” For Ebooks?

I’ve seen this a couple of places now, and I just don’t understand it. First, Alan Jacobs wrote about how easy note taking is with his e-reader in his book The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, and now an article by educational technology and literacy expert Jamie McKenzie is suggesting that ebooks enhance the reading experience by a.) making note taking easier and b.) using the web to explore topics that intrigue the reader in the midst of the reading experience.

First, I just don’t find it as easy to keyboard notes into the text with a touchscreen or highlight with my finger as I do to write or highlight by hand. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but hunting and pecking on my smartphone or ereader is frustrating and distracting and I’ve been known to just skip over taking notes or writing down questions while reading ebooks. Highlighting is equally frustrating for me- it could be a lack of coordination but I never seem to be able to highlight exactly what I want- I get extra lines, or miss words. It’s a complete disruption for me. I don’t think it’s just because I’m a digital immigrant- I asked a recent college graduate about this, and she had the same issues. If this is frustrating for me, an adult, then what would it be like for kids? As for browsing through the Web to explore words and ideas that I encounter when I’m reading, that doesn’t mean to me that it’s so much an interactive experience or an “advantage” as it is a distraction from the narrative. I think it’s great to have that as a resource at hand if necessary, but to browse further and further away from the book without actually interacting with the text you access doesn’t seem like an advantage… it seems like a reason you might never actually finish the book. Because, as Alan Jacobs notes, we do live in an age of distraction, which can make deep reading difficult indeed.

Jacobs’ argument for the advantage of ebooks over print is, in fact, that ebooks (or at least Kindle books) enable concentrated reading because features like Web browsing are difficult to access, and (at least in Kindle books) the lack of page numbers means readers are less likely to flip back and forth. I tend to agree with this so far. I haven’t been tempted to leave the text to browse the web (but this could have to do with both the kind of reader I am and the kind of ebooks I read) and the location numbers that the Kindle uses make it very difficult to go back. I find the second more annoying than advantageous because I read very quickly and one of the disadvantages of reading quickly is that I end up skipping over sections of text that I need to understand the story going forward. But the lack of page numbers does mean that you keep going forward, and since you aren’t cued by the physical length of the book as to how much more there is to read, you are more likely to keep going. When you’re in the flow, which happens easily when there are no defined physical limits, it’s hard to stop. If you love being swept up in the story, that’s a definite advantage. Unless you’re like me, and reading is like an addiction, where setting limits is REALLY important (especially when you’re reading, say, Outlander).

Speaking of Outlander, there is, I think, one advantage that I have discovered ebooks have over physical books, and that’s flexibility. In reading Jacobs’ book, I was convinced to turn back and look at some of the “classics” that I hadn’t touched since high school. It was a lot more comfortable to reread Oliver Twist on my smartphone than it would have been to carry a clunky physical copy around- Dickens was paid by the word, and his books aren’t short (and neither is Outlander– you could break your wrists carrying around the physical copy). It’s also probably unlikely that I would have sought out a physical copy of The Canterville Ghost after seeing the movie (with Patrick Stewart as the ghost) as it’s a very short work. But it certainly is well worth a read!

Well, now I’m rambling a bit, so to return to my original point- is it really a “dramatic advantage”, as McKenzie describes it, to be able to wander away from the book in midstream, even to explore the events and ideas you encounter? In my personal experience, no. Is note taking and highlighting easier and more organized? Well, my experience is that it’s not easy enough for me to discover whether it’s a better way to organize my thoughts. Do ebooks, as Jacobs suggests, enable more concentrated reading at a time when that’s becoming more difficult? I think they can, and that’s an overall advantage for readers. Can ebooks encourage us to try new genres, different lengths of texts, or more challenging works? I think so, if we consciously attend to what and how we read.

But when it comes to really paying attention to what’s between the covers, I’ll take the physical book, pen and highlighter in hand, thank you very much.

Posted on June 1, 2012 by , 2 comments