Booking Through Thursday: Electronic vs Paper

This week’s Booking Through Thursday is a little different in that Deb is asking participants to add their thoughts directly to the meme thread, rather than the usual way of linking directly to a participation post on one’s own blog. Good move because as Deb says it’s a time consuming affair hopping around everyone’s blog to read responses and I couldn’t agree more.

Today’s topic is the contentious one of electronic vs tradtional books. I responded on the meme thread as requested, but for the benefit of my own readers below is a direct copy/paste of my response:

Great question and one that gets brought up everywhere.

I have an eReader (a Sony Reader PRS-505 like the one shown in the Time Magazine article) and I adore it immensely. I’m actually quite an advocate of ebooks, and uniquely I completed the last 2 years of my recent degree (Medieval History and Archaeology) almost paperlessly using a book scanner, a Tablet PC and a multi-monitor setup at home. This is a massive achievement considering I must have physically read 300-400 books in those final 2 years. I should add that 80% of the books I scanned were owned by me and in the case of the other 20% I would copy portions of books as I would if I were photocopying them under ‘educational usage’. All scans have now been destroyed.

I’ve kind of eased up a bit on the paperless side of things now because 1) I finished my degree last summer ans 2) my love for books in their natural ‘dead tree’ form transcends everything, but I still love my Sony Reader (plus I still use my Tablet PC for ‘ebooking’ when intense annotation etc. is required).

The main advantages I’ve found in using ebooks over their paper counterparts are – weight saving of course, especially when you’re mobile around campus or shuttling back and forth to work, and the fact that ebooks have an unchanging form i.e. no need for repositioning, struggling to keep the book open etc.

Ultimately though I’d like to think that both forms can co-exist together, and in my experience I’ve found that they can. True bibliophiles would always pick traditional books over ‘newfangled’ ebooks and it’s obvious why. That said I’d definitely consider myself a ‘true bibliophile’ but I’m quite happy to use either – although I have to own books that are really special to me in their traditional form.
Hope that brings something to the discussion
Warmest
Rob