The End of the World has already arrived...

... in Ashburnham, Massachusetts:

Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception.

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks - the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital.

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.

Keep reading, if you can stomach it. By the way, it's not that I'm against any and all e-books. But this seems quite wrong in so many ways. You cannot really replace the look, feel, and presence of physical books.  In the words of Fr. Fessio: "We prefer books in the traditional print medium, especially the kinds of books we ordinarily publish — books that have lasting value and the beauty of whose outward form reflects, incarnates the nobility of the content. For those whose idea of a cozy living room is not a wall of bookshelves with one Kindle in the corner, or who like to touch real paper and see real ink when they relax to read, we intend to continue to publish ‘real books.’"

Comments

[Jackson]

Also see Fr. Schall's latest Last Things column, Libraries Without Readers:

http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1305&theme=home&loc=b

[Kim Jordan]

The headmaster is right: "This isn't Farenheit 451", it is 1984. To the parents of the pupils at Cushing Academy, I say: Keep the books; find a new home for the headmaster.

[Eric Sammons]

In the article, a paper entitled "Hamlet’s Blackberry: Why Paper is Eternal" by William Powers is referenced. It is available online here and well worth reading for anyone interested in this subject. Powers shows why e-reading is vastly inferior to paper reading when it comes to "deep-dive" meditative reading.

[Kevin C.]

Too bad for them, but, I gotta ask: How do I get my hands on those books they are 'giving away'?

[Karen]

I just bought a book store. How can I get the free books?

[Nick Milne]

I'm currently pursuing a PhD in English literature, and I'm sort of torn on this issue. On the one hand, I have a great and unconquerable appreciation for real paper-and-ink books - though still a young man, I own about three thousand of them - but, on the other, for the purposes of my research, it has more often than not been the case that electronic versions of the books I need have been more helpful than the printed and bound versions. They are very easily searched, after all, and they're available in locations and contexts in which their physical counterparts are not. This has been particularly important to me since my university's library has endured a number of funding crises and is not as up-to-date on things as I'd like - they do not have the Ignatius Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, for example, though the school at which I did my MA does.

I would never ask for or even hope that any library anywhere would divest itself of its physical volumes, these being the most basic unit of information storage we have, but I can't come down very hard on e-reading as an experience - or as a potential future of the form - given how useful it has proven to be in the work I've been doing. A lot of this has to do with the admittedly troubling circumstances that my school's library endures, but a lot of it is also inherent to the form.

I'm sad about the loss of 20,000 books, but not necessarily because they've been replaced by electronic versions of same.

[Ed Peters]

Whattadope.

[Jackson]

Digitization is another sign of this age's rejection of the Incarnate Word.

[Eric Sammons]

Nick,

Always remember the various purposes that paper books have served; they have been used for storing information, researching topics, gathering news, meditation, and a host of other things. Some of these purposes can now be better accomplished in other formats. For example, research is vastly improved via the electronic format rather than the paper form. However, paper still is greatly superior to electronic screens when it comes to doing deep meditative reading.

If a library is just a research facility, then I can see the point in moving to an all-electronic format. But if its purpose is also to encourage deep reading, then they need to stick to paper books, at least for the foreseeable future.

[Nicholas Jagneaux]

Just wanted to note the irony:

In the discussion of why print media promotes "deep thinking" (with which I agree, by the way), I quickly followed the link to read William Powell's essay ... online.

Oh, well.

(Eric, thanks for the link. :) )