Covid-19 Response: Evidence of How Higher Ed Can Be Completely Restructured?

[mamselle]

How else will we teach them what books are and how to use them?

Exposure to the covered paper thingys is getting sparser and sparser in the elementary-to-middle-school world.

Pretty soon the TV screens in the wall that Bradbury predicted are going to take over the universe....

M.

[polly_mer]

If the only place people encounter physical books is school, how much can physical books matter to normal people?

My primary physical books at this point are pleasure reading and textbooks for new areas where I need formal explicit instruction.  I do a ton of reading, but it's electronic now.

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.

I thought I'd miss the libraries that have been shut for months.  What I miss is my Saturday morning routine and a handful of reference books that are not available electronically.

[Caracal]

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.????

[Wahoo Redux]

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.????

I read a great many ebooks and I love my Kindlefire, and I dig the PDFs I've saved to my computer, but I am a long way away from giving up my paper books, particularly since I spend my time writing about these books.

We had a chemistry professor unsuccessfully attempt to shut down our library.  I almost posted about this but decided it was too inflammatory.

[Caracal]

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.????

I read a great many ebooks and I love my Kindlefire, and I dig the PDFs I've saved to my computer, but I am a long way away from giving up my paper books, particularly since I spend my time writing about these books.

We had a chemistry professor unsuccessfully attempt to shut down our library.  I almost posted about this but decided it was too inflammatory.

Well, you probably aren't on Poly's list of good academics.

[Wahoo Redux]

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.????

I read a great many ebooks and I love my Kindlefire, and I dig the PDFs I've saved to my computer, but I am a long way away from giving up my paper books, particularly since I spend my time writing about these books.

We had a chemistry professor unsuccessfully attempt to shut down our library.  I almost posted about this but decided it was too inflammatory.

Well, you probably aren't on Poly's list of good academics.

Good point.

[TreadingLife]

If the only place people encounter physical books is school, how much can physical books matter to normal people?

My primary physical books at this point are pleasure reading and textbooks for new areas where I need formal explicit instruction.  I do a ton of reading, but it's electronic now.

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.

I thought I'd miss the libraries that have been shut for months.  What I miss is my Saturday morning routine and a handful of reference books that are not available electronically.

Electronically annotating a text just doesn't feel the same, nor does it seem to make the same lasting neural impact. I need to physically hold, underline and annotate a text, at least if I am reading it for research or teaching.

[mamselle]

+1,000....

   And we're not alone.

You should see some of the cool glosses and marginalia that folks left in their 13th c. manuscripts...and they weren't all 13th c. readers, either.

M.

[Caracal]

When I asked forumites about where they kept their emergency books, the good academics here specifically mentioned their e-readers.????

I read a great many ebooks and I love my Kindlefire, and I dig the PDFs I've saved to my computer, but I am a long way away from giving up my paper books, particularly since I spend my time writing about these books.

We had a chemistry professor unsuccessfully attempt to shut down our library.  I almost posted about this but decided it was too inflammatory.

Well, you probably aren't on Poly's list of good academics.

Good point.

Yeah, snark aside, I sometimes find it convenient in the moment to use an ebook for teaching or research (usually when I get to school and realize I forgot to bring my copy from home or vice versa) but it isn't nearly as easy or efficient to use. I find it much harder to skim an ebook or find a particular passage I'm looking for. If we are going to be talking about a book chapter for class, I can usually remind myself of the gist of it in about 5 minutes of skimming, it doesn't work as well on an ebook for some reason.

[polly_mer]

1). I was using 'good academics' in the sense of 'folks here are mostly academics who care about being academics', not an exclusionary subset of people here, but I guess we're still poking at each other, Caracal, aren't we.

Have you upgraded to reading primary reports or are we going to keep seeing misinformed science straight from the mass media headlines in combination with a complete lack of awareness that higher ed has open interest media where issues of great interest to the community are actively discussed like Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle of Higher Education?

You're not showing any evidence of the relevant outlets, but keep acting as though the observation of that lack is missing one particular highly specialized article found only in the basement at the bottom of a filing cabinet behind a sign stating 'beware of tiger'.

2) Sometimes needing paper for a specific task is not at all the same as keeping libraries frozen exactly as they are at some point in time because everyone should start from where a generic you personally started as a child.  I'm amazed frequently on how some of the people explicitly tasked with teaching critical thinking as part of lifelong learning freeze their own habits and views soon after graduating to insist that's what all students now and for the foreseeable future need.

I have scanned items with marginalia to attach a copy in a data base with my additional notes.  My employer has a stadium-sized room to capture that kind of additional useful information as world experts in tiny knowledge areas have retired.  However, it's not at all clear that most middle schoolers have access to the personal copies of items of experts with marginalia worth saving.

[Caracal]

1). I was using 'good academics' in the sense of 'folks here are mostly academics who care about being academics', not an exclusionary subset of people here, but I guess we're still poking at each other, Caracal, aren't we.

Have you upgraded to reading primary reports or are we going to keep seeing misinformed science straight from the mass media headlines in combination with a complete lack of awareness that higher ed has open interest media where issues of great interest to the community are actively discussed like Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle of Higher Education?

You're not showing any evidence of the relevant outlets, but keep acting as though the observation of that lack is missing one particular highly specialized article found only in the basement at the bottom of a filing cabinet behind a sign stating 'beware of tiger'.

I think you're being very strange, and this whole tack of yours is incredibly boring. I'm really not going to engage in a discussion about whether I read the forum or insidehighered  enough. If you don't agree with something I write, you can say so, if you don't think it is interesting, you're free to move on.

2) Sometimes needing paper for a specific task is not at all the same as keeping libraries frozen exactly as they are at some point in time because everyone should start from where a generic you personally started as a child.  I'm amazed frequently on how some of the people explicitly tasked with teaching critical thinking as part of lifelong learning freeze their own habits and views soon after graduating to insist that's what all students now and for the foreseeable future need.

I use electronic stuff all the time for teaching and research. I wish more things were digitized in my field, it would save me a lot of time and trouble. (Why, why isn't all microfilm digitized?) I don't begrudge anyone their own methods of reading or note taking, my own are pretty eccentric and wouldn't be useful to others. However, when I see students try to look something up in class using an electronic version, it seems to almost always take them longer than it does using a physical copy. I can't really think of many academics in my field or related fields, who don't buy and make use of, physical books. I'm sure there are cultural factors at play, but I also suspect that if you're going to try to absorb and have access to information presented in a narrative form, quickly, there are a lot of real advantages to actual, real books. There are disadvantages too, of course, which is probably I use ebooks more and more these days, but if I have both options sitting right in front of me, I'll always go for the physical copy.

[Wahoo Redux]

1). I was using 'good academics' in the sense of 'folks here are mostly academics who care about being academics', not an exclusionary subset of people here, but I guess we're still poking at each other, Caracal, aren't we.

Just funnin', Polly.

[spork]

Disclaimer: I like libraries and paper books.

+1,000....

   And we're not alone.

You should see some of the cool glosses and marginalia that folks left in their 13th c. manuscripts...and they weren't all 13th c. readers, either.

M.

Most of my career in higher ed has been spent at institutions that are overwhelmingly oriented around undergraduate instruction. These students are not researching medieval manuscripts. A quarter of them major in "business." When it comes to reviewing published literature on a subject, many are unable or unwilling to do more than look at a Quora page that pops up in a Google search -- despite departmental learning outcomes and other claims about students' research skills. The Western Civ 101 course that checks the history box in the gen ed requirements is taught by adjuncts in sections of 35-100 students; there isn't any explicit instruction or assessment in these skills, that's left for the upper-level historiography course that is taken by the 8-10 history majors graduating each year.

The library at my current university is, in terms of floor space, probably the second largest academic building on campus. It now contains the IT department, mail and print services, the ADA office, academic tutoring services, the writing center, and instructional technology support staff in addition to librarians and the physical library collection. Bound journal collections are long gone. A year ago a classroom used for library instruction was replaced with a cafe. So the "library," as traditionally conceived, was shrinking in the physical sense long before the pandemic.

More importantly: if your university had to choose between intercollegiate athletics and a library, which would continue to exist on your campus?

[Wahoo Redux]

if your university had to choose between intercollegiate athletics and a library, which would continue to exist on your campus?

Athletics, even though our athletic teams are strictly unimpressive.

We actually have a nice 6 story library.  The students use it a lot for studying, probably because we are a commuter school and lack dorms, and it has a section dedicated to cyber research, including up-to-date instructional space. 

However, one can tell exactly when the funding was dropped based on the publication dates of the books on the shelves (mid-'80s); we have virtually every "important" book up until that time and virtually none after.  It's almost like a musty old library out of an Indiana Jones movie.

Perhaps this is simply part of the evolution of higher ed, but it does seem to me one more point at which we let education shrivel during our era.  The question is simply how far we will let it go.

[mamselle]

Most of my career in higher ed has been spent at institutions that are overwhelmingly oriented around undergraduate instruction.

Understood, and I realize there is a huge range of interest, financial capacity to support MS collections, a need for basic literacy in the base language, etc. as well. And I'm very aware (having also taught in such settings) that food in the cafeteria may need to come before anything else in the budget in some places.

But the student's level needn't inhibit their interest in more specific studies. in fact my interest in manuscripts began with an undergrad course, in which I ended up analyzing 6 medieval illuminations for a final paper. I was making colonial costumes when I was in 8th grade. Two of my middle-school keyboard students also play historically-informed instruments in a re-enaction unit's band. I don't think age determines the capacity to appreciate early works.

And I have tried to pass that interest on to my students in various courses I've taught, so that they realize there's depth and meaning in other eras' and other cultures' products. (And I think, or suspect, that you do as well, so I'm not really thinking of this reply as a dispute, more a clarification, perhaps).

I'm just kind of hoping that we won't be relying on all the nice, lovely digital files online (which I'm currently using, indeed for a paper right now, because I have to) and then someone will decide to just toss all the MSs into a bin behind the bibliotheque someday because they don't think they're valuable (because no-one ever taught them to).

Because I can only properly interpret that digital file since I've seen and touched the original...and others from the place it came from (it's not in its home town, not even its home country at present). Even with the best resolution, one can only understand certain glosses by checking them out up close.

There are sensate experiences that feed codicological and other descriptive studies, and they depend on the material culture of the books, or scrolls, or tablets, or other media, being maintained so we can interact with them.

Sorry....blathering on, I should just go work on the article....

M.