Reading behavior in the digital environment, by Ziming Liu. Review and Musings/J. Colannino

How has reading behavior changed with the advent of electronic documents? To find out, Dr Ziming Liu used a convenient sample comprising 250 surveys distributed to “engineers, scientists, accountants, teachers… managers… and graduate students at San Jose State University,” of which 119 were returned (six of them incomplete). In his study, he reports that online text is harder to comprehend and slower to read. The medium affects the message.

Perhaps changes are inevitable with the introduction of any new technology. When the masses began learning to read and write, philosophers such as Plato complained that we would lose our memories. I personally witnessed university professors warning of mental decline and that slide rules were better at preserving mathematical acumen. (Perhaps great mathematicians voiced a similar refrain with the advent of the slide rule; I am old enough to have used one, but not old enough to have witnessed its introduction!) The widespread influence of television prompted Marshall McLuhan to note that “the message is the medium,” meaning that television’s necessarily iconic representations changed not only how information was presented, but what was presented. Indeed, most of these prognostications have come to pass to greater or lesser extent, but on balance, society has benefited not lost. Apparently, this trend continues with electronic documents.

Most of us can bear personal witness to Liu’s conclusions, agreeing that electronic documents result in

• Less time spent on in-depth reading
• Less time annotating text
• Shallower, more fragmented and less concentrated reading
• Less intensive reading, and
• The printing of documents

With respect to this last point, Liu says “It seems unlikely that the computer will in the future replace the printed book as a reading medium in the way that it replaced the typewriter as a writing tool.” On the other hand, electronic documents have some amazing advantages, including

• The timely availability of information
• Hyperlink options
• Imbedded multimedia such as audio and video clips

Indeed, it is these features which (quoting Levy) lead “toward shallower, more fragmented, and less concentrated reading,” as users jump from the text to who knows where via hyperlink.

My Experience
I am a quinquagenarian who does plenty of traditional reading – especially of books. I highlight and annotate them copiously. I rarely reread books; the simple act of highlighting and annotating serves to etch the big picture and seminal facts in my mind. But what if I am trying to provide a formal reference for an important fact? In that case, my memory tells me which book to select and where on which page to look. If it is a fact I remember, I probably highlighted it on my initial reading, so the highlighting doubles as a finding aid. This accords with Liu’s summary of Olsen’s work: “Readers tend to establish a visual memory for the location of items on a page and within a document.”

Being over forty and a lover of books is supposed to be a recipe for shunning e-text; at one time this was true; but now in most ways, I prefer e-text. True, with e-documents, there is no side of the page or physicality to help in locating facts. However, I can search for the exact phrase and find it instantly, so this is not much of a handicap. Indeed, there are many advantages. For one, hyperlinked references are much more convenient than traditional print references. (How I wish footnoted references on physical pages were hyperlinked!) While I can (and sometimes do) misplace books, I can always find an electronic document on my computer, invoking the search engine if necessary.

Before I began graduate studies only a year ago, I was reluctant to read text on screen. However, I now read all e-text onscreen. Since most of our reading assignments are scholarly works of ten to fifteen pages each, I would say that I have now mastered the art of reading and writing electronically.

Old Dog Learns New Tricks
I am an old dog who has learned new tricks. I do everything I used to do with print materials and more; I highlight (usually in three different colors – yellow for important points, green for really important points, and pink for definitions), and I annotate. I do this with two main programs – Adobe Acrobat Writer and Word. I am aware of no e-text which cannot be converted to one of these formats.

If I can do it, anyone can do it. So maybe we should think of e-text and books as microwave and conventional ovens, respectively. Some things are less satisfying in the microwave, but we have learned the advantages of each and in so doing, we have learned how to live with both.