Up & Coming Weekly

6 UCW FEBRUARY 17 - 23, 2010 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM You might remember Sam Taylor, the young chaplain's sssistant serving with the Army in Iraq whose musings on the Real True Date for coming home were published in this column late last year. Sam's father, an old friend, emailed me another of Sam's writings recently, and it I was fl abbergasted by the topic. Sam addressed whether we should still have real books in school libraries, an idea so startling that I could hardly believe it. Sam, thankfully, is just as put off by the notion as I am, describing it as "burning 5,000 years of human culture at the altar of the shiny and exciting." I was alarmed, unable to conceive of a completely virtual school library for all sorts of reasons. There is the joy of actually holding a book and fl ipping through its pages to determine whether you fi nd it intriguing and the realization, especially for a child new to books and reading, that you can learn something from or be entertained by the words on those pages. Then, as always, there is the cost. How on earth could America's schools afford to become virtual libraries? Computers and the new e-readers are expensive, as is some of the digitized material to be read on them. The very next day, though, I happened upon the same debate in the New York Times among educators and authors who hold various and decidedly sensible opinions on the topic. This great debate, it seems to me, is quite grounded and has the interest of many people, as I immediately discovered in the Times. One such person is Nicholas Carr. Carr has written extensively on changes wrought by our expanding digital world, including The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. Here is part of his take on the school library debate. "The printed word long ago lost its position of eminence in the American library. If you go into any branch of a public or school library, you'll almost certainly see more people staring into Internet terminals than fl ipping through the pages of books. It is hardly a surprise, then, that some educators, librarians and parents would see books — expensive, cumbersome, distressingly low-tech — as dispensable. Once an oxymoron, the 'bookless library' is becoming a reality. But if we care about the depth of our intellectual and cultural lives, we'll see that emptying our libraries of books is not an example of progress. It's an example of regress. The pages of a book shield us from the distractions that bombard us during most of our waking hours. As an informational medium, the book focuses our attention, encouraging the kind of immersion in a story or an argument that promotes deep comprehension and deep learning." Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, an associate professor of English that the University of Maryland weighed in with this. "Do schools need libraries and do students need books? Of course they do. There are the predictable brickbats: Not everything is digitized yet, nor soon will be. A screen is less conducive to deep concentration than the stillness of the page. Bits are brittle….Books and libraries are working (or living) models of knowledge information. We need them for the same reason we need models of atoms and airplanes. They are hands- on. They are immersive. Holding a book in our hands, we orient ourselves with a larger system." Liz Gray, the obviously practical president of the board of the Association of Independent School Librarians, has this to say. "Just because there's a lot of information online does not mean that students know how to fi nd it, nor is the freely available information always the best information or the right information….Besides, no online collection can replace the unique collection of resources that I have built over a period of years to serve the specifi c needs of my students, faculty and curriculum." William Powers, author of the soon to be released Hamlet's BlackBerry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age, makes perfect sense. "In times of rapid technological change, there's a natural tendency to get caught up in the moment and believe the past is being completely swept away … The idea that books are outdated is based on a common misconception: the belief that new technologies automatically render existing ones obsolete, as the automobile did with the buggy whip … Seventy years ago, many believed the advent of television spelled the end of radio. Wrong. Likewise, the automobile didn't kill the passenger train. On this crowded, environmentally troubled planet, it turns out pulling up all those rail lines was shortsighted and dumb. So it goes with books … I believe that in a hyper-connected age, the fact that books are not connected to the grid is becoming their greatest asset. They're a space apart, a private place away from the inbox where we can to quiet our minds and refl ect. Isn't that the state of mind in which the best kind of learning occurs?" Curled up with a book and a blanket during the recent snow, I felt much relieved. Books are going to be O.K. MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Are Books Really Worth It? by MARGARET DICKSON THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Each Home Instead Senior Care ® franchise offi ce is independently owned and operated. © 2010 Home Instead, Inc. • Companionship • Medication Reminders • Meal Preparation • Light Housekeeping • Shopping & Errands • Personal Care homeinstead.com Call for a free, no-obligation appointment: 910.484.7200 For all your offi ce parties, church gatherings, holiday get togethers and other special event catering needs. Dine-in • Catering & Delivery • Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner F chu to Di Di Di D ne ne ne-i -i -in n n • C 419 Cross Creek Mall • 910-860-0524 (fax) 910-860-0253 • www.jasonsdeli.com

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