Digital and printed books will continue to co-exist
While the argument on whether digital or printed books are best is likely to continue for many years to come, the fact is that both mediums are perfectly capable of providing you with the means to read whatever you wish. However, as Mashable states, reading a book is an entire experience from cover to cover, and while eBooks are certainly gaining more prominence, they aren’t a definitive replacement to the printed word; instead, eBooks offer an entirely different kind of reading experience.
So when you’re trying to decide which method is best for you, you need to think about more than just the practical aspects of each medium. But, if you don’t really care for the “experience” of reading using either method, then creating a digital library is probably a much better choice for you. But why would you want to create a digital library in the first place? What sort of benefits come from going electronic in all your book purchases?
Accessibility and Patience
The technological world of today is sometimes considered a world of growing impatience. While the truth of that statement can vary widely based on many factors, it doesn’t have any particular hold when it comes to eBooks. Buying an eBook is pretty much instantaneous. As long as you have an Internet connection and a method of payment attached to your account, you can buy, download, and begin reading your eBook within minutes, if not less. The speed and ease of purchasing eBooks is such a benefit that sites like Success Consciousness list it as the top advantage over print. Additionally, they discuss how, thanks to the speed and accessibility of eBooks, you can find whatever information you need by quickly and easily downloading a relevant eBook.
Environmental Impact and Preservation
As the controversy over humanity’s impact on the environment continues to grow and gain ground, more people are beginning to turn to environmentally friendly methods of doing whatever they can. Buying eBooks and creating a digital library are definitely gaining popularity as methods of helping the environment while still enjoying as many books as you please. An eBook doesn’t just avoid the need for printing on paper, which in turn avoids the need for cutting down more trees, it also saves the trash loaded into a landfill when a book is discarded. Digital libraries also avoid the pollution that would have been created from the processing and transportation of a printed book’s materials.
Additionally, as Epublishers Weekly states, eBooks can help preserve texts, as they not only create multiple copies of the work, they also don’t degrade, rot, crumble, develop mildew, fall apart, or burn. eBooks will last as long as computers and devices capable of reading them are around, which should hopefully be a long time yet.
Storage, Travel, and Education
As you would expect, carrying around your digital library is incredibly easy. No matter which eReader or tablet you use, whether it’s the Samsung NOOK, iPad, or something else, you’ll have the capability to carry thousands of eBooks in your pocket, wherever you go. The ability to store as many eBooks as you could want and then take them with you wherever you go is, arguably, the best benefit of building an electronic library.
The ease of carrying around so many different books in such a light package is also a fantastic draw for students across the globe. If you’ve ever had to deal with lugging around a backpack full of heavy textbooks, you can easily see the benefits eBooks have for students. Additionally, as Southern University points out, eBooks can help students learn through different methods. This is especially beneficial for those students who have difficulty reading through pages upon pages of text. An eBook can have integrated video or diagrams to explain different points, which can help to enrich the learning process.
Money, Money, Money
There are a couple of different financial benefits to using eBooks over their printed counterparts. The simplest and most basic of these benefits is the regular cost of buying an eBook compared to a printed book. While you can probably find mass market paperbacks for similar prices, most printed books are much more expensive than a digital version. Additionally, as Springer discusses, the day-to-day costs involved with maintaining a library, especially an academic one, can be drastically reduced by using eBooks instead of printed books. Not only are the costs involved with damage, loss, and security removed, but the need for multiple personnel to deal with cataloging, shelving, and other handling procedures is removed.
Plus, a printed book can only be accessed by one person at a time, while an eBook can have multiple people viewing it from multiple different locations all at once, provided the right DRM issues are dealt with.
In The End
While there are plenty of additional benefits to eBooks, easy annotation, instant dictionary access for explanation, and so on, deciding which medium you would prefer is still 100 percent a personal choice. Printed books and eBooks will continue to co-exist for a long time to come, so why not get some of both.
