While digital media might make reading easier and more convenient, there's something about the printed word that enchants people in a way modern technology has yet to achieve.
Book lovers speak about the way this very old technology continues to satisfy so many of our senses – the feel of a book in your hands, the look of the art on the cover, the sound of the pages turning one after the other, and even the smell of the glue that holds it all together.
Reminiscent of how music lovers will tell you a song just sounds better on vinyl, book lovers will tell you how much better the experience is with a physical copy of your favourite story, for any number of reasons.
Or, in the case of St. Albert Library Director Peter Bailey, for every reason.
"A print book is the perfect technology. It didn't need to be improved upon," he said.
A growing market
Yet that attitude has by no means slowed the appetite for the library's digital offerings, which have basically doubled every year since the first electronic items were introduced into the collection in 2010.
In 2014, electronic items including e-books, e-magazine and other electronic audiovisual materials accounted for close to one-tenth of the entire circulation, roughly 82,000 items.
Heather Dolman, the library's public services manager, said this growth has been fuelled in part by a variety of digital offerings, including audio and video, but e-books make up no small part of this figure.
"It's just growing year after year," she said.
Yet this circulation figure actually translates into a slowdown in growth of digital circulation at just a 50-per-cent growth over 2013's 54,000 items circulated, compared to 100-per-cent growth each year dating back to 2010.
This slight slowdown corresponds to figures reported by the publishing industry as a whole, which would seem to indicate a reduced appetite for digital material.
Publisher's Weekly, a trade magazine, ran a story in March about the fact some of the largest book publishers have seen a decline in e-book sales, including the likes of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, two of the biggest publishing companies in the world. While these declines are in the range of just one or two percentage points, it's nonetheless a noteworthy development.
Advantages and disadvantages
Dolman said while there may be the impression that e-readers would bring a whole new demographic to the written word, her understanding is it's the same people who were already reading who are using the high-tech devices.
In fact, rather than bringing high-tech users to books, the advent of e-books has actually brought many older readers to the high-tech devices.
"We have one senior who voraciously goes through our e-book collection," she said. "She's reading on an iPad because she needs the large print, and there's more available to her that way."
Dolman noted e-books have the added advantage of being accessible from anywhere. This library patron also has some mobility issues, and downloading an e-book gives her access to fresh reading materials without having to brave the cold weather and icy sidewalks.
Peter Bailey noted e-books have also been a tremendous boon to those who are print-disabled, referring to the roughly 10 per cent of Canadians who are visually impaired or are simply physically or mentally unable to take in printed materials.
"They say about five to seven per cent of print materials are available in accessible formats like digital e-books," he said. "It's a tiny sliver, but it's grown thanks to the wave of e-books and digital information."
Even typical readers without any physical concerns find some degree of advantage in the e-book. St. Albert resident Bryan Davidsen, an avid reader, said he appreciates that in many cases e-books are simply a cheaper alternative to the printed version.
He said it's also nice to have so many books available for impromptu reading, for example with an unexpected wait at a doctor's office.
"It's nice to have 100 books at my disposal, whereas in those kinds of situations you're not going to have 15 books on you," he said.
Yet he can also appreciate the printed book as well, for its many esthetic qualities among other things.
"Showing off your book collection is, for me, it's like art on my wall," he said. "I still like to have that."
For Ron Trettler, a St. Albert senior who balks at the prospect of reading a book on a screen, it's not just about the esthetic qualities of holding a physical book in your hands but also about the artifact itself and what happens when we're done reading.
"You can recycle it, reuse it, give it to a bookstore and it gets further use," he said. "After you read an e-book, it goes in the garbage. You just delete it."
Bailey Books owner Barry Bailey, no relation to Peter, said there are many reasons to appreciate printed books, but foremost in his mind is the esthetic quality to which so many others have referred.
Many appreciate the experience of walking into a bookstore, like three young ladies who recently visited his shop.
"They were so happy to find it," he said. "They spent an hour and half in here, were asking questions about some books and bought some books."
Bailey does bookbinding and book repair in his store as well, and said that experience has shown him just how much a physical copy of a book can mean to someone.
One woman came in with an old bible belonging to her father, a mechanic, which he had carried with him at work every day. She asked him to fix it up – but she said under no circumstances was he to clean the grease marks from the pages where her father had thumbed through it.
"She didn't want to lose that aspect to it," he said. "I can't see someone three generations from now wanting to hand down their Blackberry."
Library changes
Peter Bailey said while the rapid expansion of digital information, not just from e-books but also in terms of the reference material widely available on the Internet, has forced a lot of changes at the library the basic premise is still the same.
Libraries still exist to connect people with information, and that information is a means to empower people in one way or another.
The big difference is that 20 years ago information was scarce. People went to the library to get connected with the hard-to-find information they were looking for.
These days, information is plentiful, but with that comes a great deal of misinformation, meaning the knowledge that someone is after may still be difficult to access.
"It used to be an information desert, now it's an information ocean," Peter Bailey said. "You still need somebody to help you figure things out."
One of the big challenges the recent boom in e-books and other e-materials has brought forward has to do with various kinds of digital rights management, which can actually mean increased costs for the library, depending on the publisher.
"They all different have arrangements," Dolman said. "Some of them you can have for 26 checkouts, some of them you can have for a year then you have to buy another copy, then some you can have for five years."
Furthermore, publishers are actually charging libraries more for materials than they would a private consumer, specifically because there is expected to be that wider distribution and the publishers don't want to lose out on potential sales.
Dolman, however, rejects that reasoning, arguing libraries remain the publishing industry's greatest assets in terms of getting the published materials into people's hands and then beyond.
"There are studies that show once somebody's read it, they may buy it to give to someone else, or those other people that buy the book as well," she said.
Bookstore changes
Barry Bailey knows all about the changes hitting bookstores, especially the smaller ones like his.
Yet the very technology that's in some ways making it harder for bookstores to make a go of it is also in another sense helping the smaller, specialty bookstores stay in business.
Sites like ABEbooks help connect specialty distributors with customers all over the world, to the point that Bailey's shop in the Riel Business Park wouldn't stay in business without them.
"I wouldn't have a method to sell my books without the Internet, so it's kind of a double-edged sword," he said. "Every used book seller you see sells online."
He specializes in older books, signed books, and other out-of-print materials as a way to compete with the big names in the industry. He acknowledges he couldn't compete with Chapters and Amazon if he was trying to sell the latest bestsellers to keep his lights on.
And experiences like the ones he has dealing with his bookbinding clients shows him there is still a very big demand for printed books, in no small part due to the kinds of emotional connections people develop with their most-read favourites.
"I don't think books are ever going to go away," he said. "They may not be as prevalent as they are now, but I don't think they will ever truly go away."
