Editorial: Forgive the paper cuts, keep supporting print textbooks

Let’s be real here: Textbooks are not our best friends. They cost more than our designer… Let’s be real here: Textbooks are not our best friends. They cost more than our designer shades just to hide our faces. They weigh more than a freshman after his first semester of college. And they have been known to do more bodily harm than the food from Market Central — paper cuts are no joke.

But would we prefer Pitt to offer only digital books instead?

Not at all.

According to a column in The Chronicle Review, “To move forward, academe must transform itself from a fundamentally print culture to one that is fundamentally digital.”

Online material has its benefits. “Digital books are more affordable, accessible and environmentally friendly,” the Chronicle reports.

But despite the advantages of digital books, they still have one major drawback: Students don’t want them.

Last month, The Pitt News found that despite the availability of eBooks for about 140 titles at the Book Center, few students were willing to purchase them, even considering the potential savings.

Each eBook offered at the Book Center can only be accessed from the one computer to which the purchaser downloads it. Computers aren’t always the most reliable devices, so one crash could be the equivalent of accidentally setting your entire bookcase on fire.

There is also concern that reading text off a screen is not as effective as paper reading. A report on digital reading by Anne Mangen at the University of Stavanger in Norway proposes that digital reading “makes us read in a shallower, less focused way.” In addition, Mangen finds that “the process of reading on a screen involves so much physical manipulation of the computer that it interferes with our ability to focus on and appreciate what we are reading.”

Additionally, some students learn better by taking notes or highlighting in their books — something that is made more complicated by an electronic format.

And although the digital books are cheaper, the cost of less expensive books — if you can call them that — is getting rid of an entire group of people’s jobs. No surprise, The Pitt News cares about the print publishers.

So although print textbooks make our  backpacks significantly heavier and our wallets significantly lighter, at the end of the day, we’d rather cuddle up to one of them than an eBook.