My current knowledge and understanding of concepts and practices in digital literature environments feels very minimal as it’s entirely possible I was born in the wrong era to be a modern librarian! I love books; tangible books with pages, the smell of a new book (or really old one) bringing me back to my childhood memories of reading long after I was supposed to be asleep.
BUT – and it’s a very big ‘but’, thankfully, as I would still like to be employed – I also know that digital literature environments are here to stay, and my job is to navigate the strangeness of meshing old and new, understanding that the old may become obsolete at some stage and I need to make sure I’m keeping up.
As a high school English teacher, we still read print books for study, but I also make sure to provide access to audiobooks and electronic copies where possible in order to engage different reading styles and varying learning needs. My school library has a digital e-book platform that gets rarely used; despite my efforts to suggest it as an alternative, the students at my school still seem to prefer actual books, which consistently surprises me.
A reading that stood out for me was Jabr (2013), particularly when he discussed the importance of “mapping the journey” a reader takes when using a tactile book rather than a digital version, and how having control over this tactile experience matters more than we think. To counteract this with the importance of the digital environment and and its place in reading shorter texts highlighted to me that it does not need to be an either/or situation – it can be both, and we as educators need to accept the pros and cons of both in order to provide the best for our students.
The question for me as a teacher librarian in the 21st century is do I have to agree with a text type, enjoy it or engage with it myself in order to provide access to it? The answer, of course, is no – I don’t particularly enjoy manga or science fiction, but I know many of my students do, and that is enough for me in order to provide it. Do I try to familarise myself with it, what’s popular, what works and what doesn’t? Of course. As a facilitator in providing resources that will actually get used, I know my role is to engage with things that I may feel awkward with using myself if it is for the benefit of my students. The TED talk by Joe Sabia proved to me that story-telling has not changed, just the methods in which the story is being shared, and as Kingwell (2013), we cannot know the future of the book. All we can do is make sure we as TLs are keeping up with the fast paced changes in order to provide the best possible opportunities for our students to continue to engage with reading – whatever that may look like.
References:
Jabr, F. (2013, April 11). The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens. Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
Kingwell, M. (2013, December 4). Why read literature in the digital age? University Affairs. http://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/why-read-literature-in-the-digital-age/
TED. (2011, May). Joe Sabia: The technology of storytelling [Video]. https://www.ted.com/talks/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling
