From: Karin Wikoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:43:06 -0400

You spend quite a lot of time on a plane during which no electronic
devices are allowed.  A print book can be used all times, without
electricity, without interfering with the plane's navigation, etc.  I
carried both on my last trip -- the print book for times when
electronic was not allowed, and the e-books to be sure I had enough
books to last the whole trip without having to carry a pile of print
books.

Karin

Karin Wikoff
Electronic and Technical Services Librarian
Ithaca College Library
Ithaca, NY 14850
Email: [log in to unmask]


On 5/11/2014 9:17 AM, LIBLICENSE wrote:

From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 2014 23:26:04 -0500

I don't do this with quite the thoroughness that Jim does, but I too
like to see what people are reading, and on what devices, when i
travel in airplanes. I have been pleasantly surprised at how many
people who are reading are doing so from print books on my recent
trips. People using laptops are almost all doing something other than
reading books, and I have not seen a lot of dedicated e-reader
devices. I'd estimate that well over 50% of the people on my plane
flights out of Dallas to cities on the East coast and returning to
Dallas who are reading books are doing it with print books rather than
ebooks. Maybe we're just not as technologically advanced out here in
the Southwest?

Sandy Thatcher

P.S. I carry an iPad with me, but almost never use it to read books,
preferring print books myself.



From: Jim O'Donnell <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 7 May 2014 21:15:51 -0400

Persistent liblicense readers will recall that several times in
2010-2012, I strolled through an Acela train on Sunday afternoon doing
a census of the reading public:  e- vs. p-, device vs. codex.  The
last time I see I did this (from the all-knowing Liblicense archives)
is just over two years ago, 4/29/12.  The upshot of those counts was
that print was holding its own but slipping:  counts in 2010 and 2011
found ratios of 4 and 6 to 1 in favor of print reading; by 2012, it
was down to 2/1.

Now, I well know that this is an amateur snapshot with all sorts of
things wrong with it, but just enough plausibility to keep me curious.
 Travel habits change, so I've not had the chance to do this lately,
and tonight's data come from a weeknight train, 7 p.m. out of New York
for Philadelphia, which would arguably get a few more people trying to
get work done for the day than is the case on Sunday, when the most
assiduous people are the ones evidently going to DC for NIH and NSF
panels and reading their folders carefully.  So this means as little
as you would like it to mean.

But it looks like the war is over.  The last time I reported, I
acknowledged that the smart phone was making it hard to tell who was
reading and who wasn't; this time I just had to give up and count
smart phones, because so many people were indeed giving them the
steady attention you give to continuing video or running print.  Lots
of laptops, lots of full-size tablets, a modest number of dedicated
readers (Kindle, Nook).  These counts are an amateur's approximation,
but in four business class cars we got about 120 device-readers and
about 20 print-readers.  And only halfway through the train, counting
print generously, did I wish I was counting *books* -- you know,
pages, binding, title, prose, the whole nine yards -- but when I
finished, my estimate was that no more than half the print readers
were holding a codex book.  Magazines, newspapers, paperwork accounted
for the rest.

I'll append only that I was in a large research library unfamiliar to
me last week and spent a few minutes in the stacks, coming upon an
open table area where students were furiously studying for final
exams.  They sat within yards, nay feet, of the stacks of a first-rate
library, little suspecting indeed that they were only a matter of a
few yards from BOOKS I HAD WRITTEN MYSELF, but in the presence of such
riches, every single one of the 20-25 students was devoted to a laptop
or tablet, not a readable piece of paper in sight.  (Students are said
to be passing on tablets, to divide their time between smart phone
[their life] and laptop [their work], but these still had some
holdouts.  Juniors and seniors, probably.)

Jim O'Donnell