Subject:

Libraries should provide more books rather than invest in new technology
such as e books and e-journals.

According to Merriam Webster dictionary, library is a place or a room where books,

magazines, and other materials such as videos and musical recordings are available for
people to use or borrow. Librarian is the person who works in the library. They are the
people who helps visitors to find books or getting information about the book that they
need. Libraries played an important role in people and society. It could be the only place
where people mingle and actually talk without getting distracted by their phone.
Obviously, library is a very valuable place to those people who understand what life looks
like before technology took over. People enjoyed going to the library because of the
social experience, the joy of basically just reading and the wisdom and information that is
being inherited from a book. Recently, a newer version of books and reading material
known as e-books and e-journals are taking over the internet and people declared its
existence as a replacement for book or library. As the request of e-books and e-journals
increases due to development of technology, the number of books in the library are most
likely to decrease as they are more interested in investing money on e-book rather than
actual paper books. There are firm reasons why the production of e-books and e-journals
are not enough to assist bookworms. Therefore, this report is to justify and make clear of
the need for libraries to provide more books rather than invest in new technology such as
e-books and e-journals.
Firstly, e-books and e-journals are not really safe in several aspect. According to The
voices for the library organization, In 2011 Google had deleted all of its video content
without providing reason and warning the users. Facebook had been deleting extreme
political group from their system without signal too. The same thing could happen to
users of e-books and e-journals as technology are not 100% safe and accident or loss of
data can happen any time because the safety of an e-book application such as Google
books are controlled by their respective owners which is Google itself and not the buyers
or user of e-book. Some e-books can be downloaded and can be save in Adobe or PDF
but not all e-book application allows e-bookers to do that. Most websites such as Google
books does not allow users to download books and save in whatever form due to concerns
on copyright. In other words, even if we pay a large sum of money for an e-book it is still

not ours exclusively. Nowadays, people have been using I-pads that they can bring
anywhere for internet streaming, social messaging and entertainment. Generally, i-pad
might be the solution for e-books that is quite restricted in the manner as you cant bring
an e-book anywhere without an I pad or laptop. Truth is, we are contained by technology
and are bonded to our own creation. Gadgets and technology had been controlling us and
limiting the amount of time we have for ourselves as well as our family. Paper books on
the other hands are completely controlled and manipulated by us. Traditionally, books
can also be a platform for us to spend time with love ones for instance, reading fairy tale
to toddlers before they fall asleep. Unlike e-books which is stored in an abstract and
complex system, paper books are completely controlled by us other than owning it totally.
If one day Google book decided to shut down its application, readers will not be able to
read their book again for a long period of time and they will need to find a safer ways in
order to read books or journals. Therefore, it is wiser for library to invest their money for
books by adding more books to library than technology based material such as e-books
and e-journals as it is safer and less likely to have lost information.
As we know most of libraries visitors are either academician, scholars or students.
Academician, William Walter stated in his journal, e-book in academic libraries, that only
half of the printed books acquired by academic libraries or higher institutions are
available as e-books. If theres only half of the academic books that are turned into ebooks then scholars, students and academician still need to get a printable paper books for
their usage. With a paper book, it is easier for scholars, students and academician to read
and study. In terms of navigation, paper books are easier to flip than e-books or ejournals. They can do anything on a book, they can write notes or highlight an important
words, they can put a marking on important topics and they can also feel the book
physically. Moreover, they appreciate more on the effort that they are making for the
sake of knowledge when using actual books. Consequently, students have more passion
when learning using paper book than using e-books and e-journal which in turn will help
them get excellent grades.
People do not come to library to use only academic books or fiction books but also to
read magazines watch electronic video as a way to entertain themselves. Children visited
library to read story books in order to nourish their mental and emotional strength after a

hard time at school. However, only a 33% amount of non-fiction books are made
accessible online as an e-book and the rest are not available online. In order to create an
e-book, we will need to hire a lot of type writer and spend a lot of time to type all the
books in the world to form an e-book. There are billions of books and journals in the
world that have not been migrated to the internet and theres no way we can turned all the
books or journal in the world as an e-book. Furthermore, e-book had just recently
acquired its popularity and for several century we has devotedly rely on paper books to
gain information. Thus, in order to assist readers to get the books that they need, we need
to increase the percentage production of paper books and not rely on technology to do the
work. Libraries should provide and invest more on paper books than e-book and ejournal because not all books, educational or non-educational are being migrated to the
internet as an e-book. No matter how tech savvy people are these days it is always a
good idea to visit a library for a real books rather than an e-book.
It is better to read from an actual paper book than to read from your laptop or I-pad.
According to writer and science journalist Lucia Bushak from Medical daily, research
have concluded that readers pick up less when reading an e-book because it uses more
energy and is mentally burdensome than reading from a physical books. The light on a
computer screens, laptop and I-pad will reflect directly to the readers eye causing
weariness, headache an blurred vision if exposed for too long. Besides, turning or
navigating the pages to the other side on an e-book also harms our mind as readers tend to
get mixed up since they need to focus on two things which is the text and how the cursor
should be moved. According to Scientific American, such indication are very common
among e-book readers and is known as computer vision syndrome. It affects about 70%
of people who worked long hours in front of the computers. Again, it is more sensible to
protect our health first and start thinking reading real books which is harmless than
reading from an e-book. Library should then invest more on actual books than from an ebook.
Library holds a depository of information where people can visit anytime to learn
and acquire knowledge. Library is made up of concrete while internet is an abstract
thing. We can touch and look at a library as a building but we cant really explain the
idea or the system of how the internet works. This is because a library is built through

material that we can see and touch while the creator of internet built internet by using
advance and complex mathematical and physic equations. Looking at its nature, it is
possible that one day internet will be defective and might not exist. If the time finally
comes, where do readers or scholar get their information from? Furthermore, to create
gadgets, we need metal or chemical resources like steel to build I-pad and phone or the so
called 21st century technology. Those material that were taken from the crust of the earth
will one day finish and we might need to wait for another version of dinosaurs to die for
the next batch of resource to be made available again. Trees on the other hands are
renewable source, we can cut down as many trees as we want and we can also plant trees
to replace the tree that we used to produce paper. Lets face it, one day internet may not
exist and if that happens, where do we get our information if libraries are so devoted to
rely their production on e-book or e-reading material all this while? Libraries are like a
museum where people can find century or decades of information to gain knowledge
apart from the entertainment. The question on why libraries should invest more on paper
books than e-books or e-journals should not even be an argument. It should be the
responsibilities of libraries to preserve books and all its content so that our next
generations are not blind to ink and papers. It is our responsibilities as human to save
paper books from extinction. Moreover, musician or music students are accustomed to
reading music notes from an actual books and it such a silly idea to try and read notes
from an e-book since its quite hard to navigate to the next page. Regardless of our
profession, paper books should always be our first choice to saving information just in
case the internet or the technology shuts down. Information on books should be kept
before it extinct. Therefore, libraries should provide more books rather than invest more
on e-reading material such as e-book and e-journal because it is in fact the responsibilities
of libraries to preserve paper books and all its content from extermination.
Another study from Harvard university suggest that reading e-books at night will not
give you a tight sleep and will reduce readers alertness in the morning. Similarly, they
mentioned that the direct light from laptops, iPad and computer screens will lengthen the
time it takes to fall asleep and stamp down the sleep producing hormone melatonin. In
addition, suppression of melatonin hormones are common among patient suffering from
breast cancers, cardiovascular desease, diabetes and obesity. Since light from gadgets,

computers and laptop screens can be very harmful to gadget users when it shines directly
to users eyes, adding the amount of paper books in libraries is a very good way to create
health awareness among society. Obviously, it is better to prioritize health
First before we come to regret for not caring about our welfare.
Readers who read paper books are less likely to get distracted when reading rather
than readers who read e-materials. When we purchased an e-book, apart from the PDF
version, we will need internet connection to read our e-book. As we know, there are
advertisements that can suddenly pop out from your screen to stop you from reading the
next line. Disturbing as well as entertaining advertisement such as how to get rich in 30
days will be our main enemy when reading an e-book. Readers will be captivated by the
ad that they will start to procrastinate their reading. For kids, pornographic and video
games advertisement are such things that should be avoided from the internet while
reading. Nowadays, children at a very young age have their own I-pad or gadget. Most
parents give their children gadgets like tablet to keep them from being fussy. In order to
let them make good use of the gadget, parents bought expensive e-books so that they can
use their gadget as a new learning tools. It is healthy for a child to learn with the help of
advance technology at a very young age with the supervision of guardian but without the
supervision of parents, it can turn into chaos. Children are exposed to negative influence
or information that they are not supposed to know at such young age such as sex,
cigarette and drugs. As children, we need to take care of their mind as their mind are not
yet developed and trained to know which is right and wrong. It takes a lot of time and
experiences for a child to be able to think like an adult. Unlike e-books, reading can be
less distractive and less tiresome as there will be no advertisement coming out from the
pages. Readers are free to explore the book that they are reading without thinking about
what will happen if they click the pop up advertisement and children are not exposed to
all the bad things happening on the internet. When reading an actual book, readers can
actually feel the thickness of the book that they are reading, they know when to stop and
they can experience the joy of flipping the book rather than putting on a hard work
focusing on the books and advertisement coming their way.
Finally, after laying out all the points that i have gathered to justify my view. It is
best to conclude that for the improvement of society, library should provide more books

than to invest in new technology such as e-books and e-journals because not all books are
available in the internet. There are still a lot of important books out there that are still not
turned into an e-book or e-journal. By providing more books in the library more people
can enjoy and share the knowledge that they have gain without procrastinating and
getting distracted. Adding more paper books in the library is also a ways of promoting
health care to society because they did not seems to realize the danger of reading directly
from a computer or laptop screens than an actual paper books. It is our job as a
community to remind each other to take care of our health for a better and healthier living
style. We are living in a world where knowledge are being preserve in a books and for
century our generation have been doing the same thing to conserve information so that
the next generation are not blind to knowledge and information that we gathered years
and years ago. There are no safer ways to keep information than on a piece of paper
rather than using the internet because one day, internet may vanish and it is our job to
save paper books from extermination for the next generation to come. Again for the good
of the people, it is wiser to agree that library should provide more books because it is a
fact that investing on paper books proved to be more beneficial and has more advantages
than reading and investing on technology based material such as e-book and e-journal.
(2541 words)

References
Walters. H William, (2012). E-book in Academic libraries: Challenges for acquisition
and collection management. Retrieved from https:// www .press .jhu.edu/

journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/portal_pre_print/current/articles/1

3.2walters.pdf
Naomi s Baron (2015), the case against E-readers: why reading paperbook is good for
your mind. The washington post. Retrieved from https: // www .washington
post .com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/12/the-case-against-kindle-why-readingpaper-books-is-better-for-your-mind-and-body/

Ferris Jabr, (2013). The reading brain in the digital age: the science of paper versus
screens. Scientific

American. Retrieved from http://www.scientific

american.com/article/reading-paper-screens/guardians.

E-books at night will not help you sleep tight, us study finds. TheGuardian. Retrieved
fromhttp://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/23/ebooks-affect-sleepalertness-h arvar

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Lecia Bushak (2015). E-books are damaging your health:Why we should all start reading
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