Survey Results: The Future of Print

This is the final post in a seven-part series in which we will share some of the results of our survey for scholars with you.

In our recent Faculty Survey, an interesting side debate developed in the scholars’ comments about the future of print. One respondent clearly thought that printed materials would be less important in the future. This respondent said:

-         “This seems to me to be a library or subscription like project.  Printing out is going to wane drastically. Kindle: yes! As for full-text monographs, I’d probably just ask them to buy the book. For a chapter, maybe access on line.”

But a few other scholars had drastically different views on the importance of print. One respondent had this to say:

-         “As I live in a rural area with limited access to high-speed internet access, the print options are very useful – even though I understand it is contrary to the “idea” presented here.”

While another scholar told a horror story about their attempt to deal without print

-         “I once tried to use an on-line primary document reader to accompany a textbook for the U.S. survey class … it was often difficult to find the correct material and it was not always possible to access it. I ended up finding the documents elsewhere on-line or in print and xeroxing them for the class to read the “old fashioned way,” in hard copy. Otherwise, I could not have been sure they would read the correct document in time for class discussion.”

Remembering the uproar over Sherman Alexie’s comments about the Kindle last June [the NY Times article that reported Alexie’s comments can be found here; a recap of the entire incident can be found here] one has to wonder if the battle between print and online resources will develop into a new civil rights issue in the future? We invite you to share your thoughts about the print versus online access battle below.

The LCRM staff would again like to express our gratitude to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey. You’ve clearly given us some food for thought. If you still want to participate in the LCRM project we invite you to add to the discussion on a specific topic by adding a comment to this and our other posts about the survey.

Survey Methodology and Disclaimer:  We used the Odum Institute software to host our survey and help us analyze results.  We are not statisticians and do not claim that our survey or the reports on results are scientific, although they may be indicative of trends.  We welcome comments or questions about the results.