College Students Just Want Normal Libraries
21st February 2020
So-called digital natives still crave opportunities to use libraries as libraries, and many actively seek out physical texts—92 percent of the college students surveyed in a 2015 study, for example, said they preferred paper books to electronic versions. (Plus, a growing body of evidence shows that physical books and papers are more conducive to learning than digital formats are.) The dean of learning and technology resources at one of the six campuses of Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) recently told me about a student he had met: Upon learning that her campus library had only the e-book version of a text she needed to read, the woman opted to make the trek to another campus a nearly half-hour commute away that had the hard copy. A 2016 survey of students at Webster University, which is based in Missouri but has campuses around the world, also illustrates limited use of digital resources, finding that just 18 percent of students accessed e-books “frequently” or “very frequently,” compared with 42 percent who never used them.*
I must be a wierdo, then; I have no problem reading a book on screen rather than juggling it around in my hands. Electronic copies allow text searches, non-destructive highlighting and annotation, and easy cross-referencing. Just lazy, I guess….