Doug Johnson

Who Needs Print?
Head for the Edge, Technology Connection, June 1996

For a long time now, print and technology have gotten along pretty darn well. In fact, when put side by side in a library media center or classroom, they form something of symbiotic relationship. For example:

• a student comes in for a novel, and in passing an empty terminal, runs a Lycos Internet search on the book’s author.
• a student using the electronic card catalog to reseach Egypt now finds not just the books in the geography and history section, but locates books on mythology, alphabets and costumes since a key word search turned up Egypt in the those books’ annotation fields.
• a teacher finds a brief reference to a historical figure in the electronic encylopedia, and now checks out a full print biography.
• a student doing reseach on a country in a print atlas requests a digitized map which can be modified with a paint program and imported into a word processed report.
• a teacher, having stirred the curiosity of his class with the tape of a satellite broadcast on plate tectonics, now wants a cart load of books on geology.
• a class doing research scatters - some students head to the print reference sources, some to the Internet terminals, some to the CD-ROM terminals, and some to the multi-media lab.

Adding technology to a media center is like a strip mall adding a new store - all the stores get more traffic and higher sales. Experienced teachers and media specialists know that it takes technology and print together to create a meaningful learning experiences.

Why then do some administrators, legislators, and policymakers make statements like:

“Now that you have that CD-ROM player, I guess we don’t need to by any more reference books.”
“Gee, do we need books at all with the Internet?”
“The on-line fees will have to be taken out of your magazine budget.” or
 “Our new school won’t need a library media center. All the classrooms will be networked.”

Like many new technologies, digital information sources have been accompanied by a lot of “hype” just to gain acceptance. That hyperbole can easily be believed (and even embellished) by the decision-maker who needs to find ways to reduce school expenditures. Hey, if you could provide equally effective learning experiences for your students at a substantial cost savings, you’d do it, too.

If any of you work for  decision makers who wistfully believe the end of having to lay out cash for information on paper  is in sight, I have a book you really need to read and booktalk to them. Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman’s _Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness & Reality_ (American Library Association, 1995, $25.00) does an excellent job of systematically debunking the claims of an all digital information future -  at least foreseeable future.  Crawford and Gorman’s conclusions include:

• the use of books, magazines and newspapers is not in decline, but actually growing (p. 16)
• print is still the most economical means of information delivery (p. 30)
• new technologies may change older ones, but rarely displace them (p. 48)
• the Internet is not a substitute for the “filtered” world of print publishing (p. 63)
• large scale digital conversion and storage of current print resources (given today’s technologies) are impractically expensive (p. 92)
• an all electronic library is not financially feasible (p. 100)
• there is no such thing as a “free” Internet or and computing isn’t really getting less expensive (p. 102)
• often librarians themselves seem to advocate for the end of print resources (p. 105)

Before you write Crawford and Gorman off as Luddites or technophobic cranks, consider that their book also advocates the use of digital resources where digital resources make sense. (What a concept!) Information which needs to be extremely current to be useful, which is very short-lived,  or which is better searched electronically makes sense to come to the school electronically, whether on CD-ROM or via the Internet. I would add to that list electronic resources which use a multi-sensory approach to delivering information to either clarify a concept or add interest to a subject, as well as real-time resources whose value lies in current, experiencial types of information like listservs, newsgroups and interactive World Wide Web sites.

Whether stated or not, helping administrators make good decisions about budgets is in our job descriptions. Next time you provide that help, remind them that print could borrow a line from Mark Twain: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”