Synopsis
In this paper, the Author presents the impact of digitization on English Literature. Digitization is defined as “the conversion of traditional, analog materials such as books, maps, and other paper items into an electronic, digital copy”. The impact of digitization on Literature is that it acts as a great leveler, such that students and researchers are able to find the digital world as a repository of data, accessible at one’s convenience and at lower costs. Digitization thus helps in creating a society that is well informed and knowledgeable. Based on the research done, the study has arrived at the following observations. It is seen that the genre of fiction is the most popular in the e-world. The digital world has expanded into the realm of self-publishing for authors, thereby enabling a creative output to them wherein they are able to have a control on the finances and how they reach out to their readers. A negative aspect of digitization is seen as the inability of the users to have the same felicity of the use of the senses as that of hard copy readers. The environmental impact of digitization is more pronounced than paper based books. Introduction Electronic literature and/or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. The Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) defines E-lit or Electronic literature as, “works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer”. Naturally, these writings cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the text are unable to be carried over onto a printed version; and in today’s digital era, many e-books exist without a printed equivalent. These books are sometimes defined as “an electronic version of a printed book” and are commercially produced, sold and read by dedicated e-readers. However, almost any sophisticated electronic device that features a controllable viewing screen, including computers, tablets and smart-phones can also be used to read e-books. The digital literature scene continues to create innovation in the convention of the printed text. For example, the novella Pry is exclusive to devices like iPads and iPhones for the simple fact that it requires a touch screen. Aby (1999) asserts that the evolving technology has now “allowed people to generate, process, reformat and share data in new creative, flexible and easy ways which, in turn has led to transforming the ways they communicate, learn and even think”. With the advent of the digital age starting from the early 90s, the growth of English Literature in terms of reading and hearing is no more confined to the libraries and class rooms. It is very appropriate to quote here, Grafton’s (2007) prescient words: For now and for the foreseeable future, any serious reader will have to know how to travel down two very different roads simultaneously. No one should avoid the broad, smooth, and open road that leads through the screen…The narrow path still leads, as it must, to crowded public rooms where the sunlight gleams on varnished tables, and knowledge is embodied in millions of dusty, crumbling, smelly, irreplaceable documents and books. The advantage of digitization of the books of English Literature is that it helps in creating a society that is well informed and knowledgeable. As Mims (2011) writes “It is undeniable that e-books have a democratizing effect on learning. They are inherently amenable to the frictionless dissemination of information.” A visit to the popular web-site ‘Amazon’ would reveal how e-books are priced very much lower than the printed books. The prohibitive costs of acquiring and preserving the printed book are reduced manifold if one prefers to purchase an e-book from ‘Kindle’ of Amazon. Of course the preservation of e-books though theoretically can be in centuries, but the fact remains that with the pace of the revolutionary changes happening in the digital world, preservation for prolonged periods becomes doubtful with the rate of obsolescence of the hardware and the software. But on an instantaneous basis, the breadth and depth of literary e-books available for ownership, at the lowest price is breath-taking, in terms of acquisition cost and the acquisition speed. Thus the digitization of literature and the impact it has had on the reading community has become a core area of research. In this paper, the author does not delve into the evolving or evolved e-literature, but wishes to look into how the digitizing of literature has made an impact on the reading and accessing of English literature. The paper also touches briefly on the negative aspects of digitization and the final part of the paper presents the conclusion derived by the Author from this study. Digitization of Fiction Many websites today provide a vast library of e-books, to their readers. It is literally treasure trove that is available in their hands (hand-sets). The result is that a student or a scholar does not have to depend on a physical library, to visit and to access the books or to spend a fortune in acquiring the books for his or her study. With the books available any time on hand, the reader is able to pace himself in perusing them for his or her knowledge updating. Even a non-serious reader, looking for a light reading would benefit in terms of time and costs by resorting to accessing such sites and reading the hosted e-books. Both classical and popular fiction abounds in the internet. A typical web-site where one can find such literature is http://gutenberg.net.au/. The free e-books hosted in this site may be read on a computer or mobile device using a web browser or by using free or low cost e-reader software. They can be read on Windows, Linux or Android or on ipad / iphone. From Aeschylus, to Jane Austen, to the Bronte sisters or that of George Orwell, e-books are hosted in this site. The web site’s banner describes it as “a treasure-trove of literature”, “Treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership” and it goes on to claim that “Works hosted by Project Gutenberg, Australia are in the public domain in Australia”. Another repository of rich English literature is Google Books. As a matter of fact, the author himself has benefited much by accessing these sites, downloading books on English Literature which are rare to get or are out of print or are expensive. Digitization of Poetry Just as how fiction has been digitized, there are a large number of web-sites wherein poetry is also digitized and uploaded. A typical example of such a web-site would be poemhunter.com. Here it is possible for a reader to manage an eclectic collection of poetry for reading and for study. As in the case of fiction, the author who is a student of English Literature has benefitted to a great degree by accessing the internet, where there lies a large collection of poems of all hues and authors. Not only is the internet is rich with the poems, the analysis of the poems, in the form of articles, research papers, opinions published as blogs are so much replete on the ‘net’, that the author has been left enriched by reading the widespread, diverse and analytical presentations prepared by the very many publishers on the internet. The personal experience of the Author in reading English Literature in this digital era, is fully supported by Lee (2011) who says: Researchers enabled by the new technologies, including networked information systems such as the internet, can view digital facsimiles of the artifacts from the comfort of their homes, can make comparisons, collate their own collection, and can develop effective and efficient research strategies Online Journals and Journal Databases Online journal databases like sagepub.com, projectmuse and jstor.org, host a number of journals, books and primary sources in different disciplines including English Literature. These are sites are not free and they contain within them databases of scholarly journals which are accessible for users on subscription based fee or on pay per view basis. In most cases, these online journal databases can be accessed through college or university libraries that pay an annual fee in return for an account and password. The libraries in turn hand over these details to their readers who in turn access the data they desire. Apart from these online journal databases, there exist online journals on English literature. These are professional bodies that publish scholarly articles that are peer reviewed While some of them charge fees for publishing, some are free to publish and some pay royalty to the authors which may be in the form of a one-time honorarium. The Research Journal on English Literature (rjeal.com), The International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL), The International Journal of English Language, Literature and Translation Studies (IJELR) are some examples online publishers of research articles with open access. These journals come with the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) for their recognition. Researchers and Students are now able to quickly publish their articles and papers easily through such electronic media through such online journals. Digitization as an Outlet for Artistic Creativity: With digitization and access to the electronic self-publishing (alternatively called as e-publishing), any one with inclination for writing can have his or her aspirations fulfilled by resorting to self-publishing. E-mails and blogs are popular methods for one to express one’s thoughts and feelings in writing and the whole networked world becomes the instantaneous audience for such publications. Fiction, non-fiction, essays, poems and all manner of writing find an immediate avenue for publishing in this digital age. It is more advantageous to publish online. For instance, Brenna Aubrey self-published her debut romance novel At Any Price on the Amazon Kindle on 9 December 2013. A month later At Any Price had netted a total profit of £16,588. Similarly the contemporary popular trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James was originally published online as Twilight fan-fiction before the author decided to self-publish it as an e-book. An Australian study (2015) of Australian authors highlights the dramatic and profound impact that technology is having on authors and the publishing industry. The study has surveyed more than 1,000 book authors who reside in Australia and meet specific criterion. The study finds that that the concept of self-publishing is growing and that the reasons behind this trend include authors’ desire to have creative and financial control of their work, and being unable to interest a traditional publisher in their work. The study highlights that another area of change is the way in which authors interact with their readers, with two-thirds of authors able to access readers using new technologies and that over half of the authors surveyed report that new technologies have opened up new avenues to publish paid, original work. E-publishing has become so successful that an article in The Guardian (2014) highlights that with the gathering domination of self-publishing, regular publishers are now racing to recapture the digital e-book market from self-published authors, particularly in pivotal genres like science fiction, fantasy and romance that have proved so popular with e-book readers. Nevertheless when it comes to literary fiction the impact of the internet is still not in full strength. As Mehta (2015) observes, readers of genre fiction are used to reading e-books; literary fiction readers a bit less so. Also, that as there may be many more online blogs/websites, so on devoted to genre fiction; but it is harder for a reader to find out about literary fiction that is available only digitally. She records that literary fiction is still review-driven; even though the traditional review media are shrinking, it is still really important to catch the attention of traditional critics, and so it’s very hard for e-book originals to do that. To highlight this trend, Gaughran (2012) cites the example of Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Despite winning the Pulitzer, it is ranked 38,990 in the Kindle Store. Similarly, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon another Pulitzer winner does not have the avatar of an e-book. De Niro’s Game, the winner of one of the richest literary prizes in the world - the IMPAC award - garnering the author €100,000 (approx $125,000) is another literary genre that is not available as an e-book. The Negative aspects of Digitization: Studies have shown that reading can help prevent mental health decline, but with digitization, this has taken a flip side, as seen in Mangen’s (2014) study which has found that readers who use ‘Kindle’ were less competent in recalling plots and events than those reading paper backs. Digitization has also led to the proliferation of computers, hand-helds, smart phones, tablets and other devices. The other aspect of digital era would surely be the disappearance of the grammarian. With the introduction of spell checkers and grammar checkers, today any person on the computer has become a slave for the auto-correction and it is the alerts (green and redlines of MS office) which today reigns over the grammar rules of the literature. A research by the Green Press initiative (2011) has found that a paperback results in a carbon foot print of 4 Kgs per book whereas on an equivalent basis an i-pad is responsible for 130 Kgs. (equivalent to 32.5 books) and for Amazon’s Kindle it is equivalent to 168 Kgs. (appx 42 books). Therefore there lies a break-even point for a reader to equate the e-reader to that of a paperback. Unlike a paperback which is a passive material, any device for reading a digitized book consumes power but this pales into insignificance compared to the power of lighting required to hand-hold and read a paperback in the evenings or in the nights. But the biggest drawback would be the environmental impact arising out of disposing of the e-waste, which is made up harmful materials. Unlike the paperbacks which can be recycled to make new books, the toxic wastes generated in the e-waste disposal are difficult to handle and dispose. Conclusion: The effect of the digital tools for learning the literature is that due to its present ubiquity it reduces inequality and promotes inclusivity. In a country like ours plagued by casteism, poverty and dearth of learning resources and access to centers of excellences in learning in a democratic fashion, digitization has become a great tool of a leveler. Research conducted by the ICF (2015) shows that there is indicative evidence that digital tools and resources can help to reduce gaps in subject attainment where they are effectively implemented. There is promising evidence that digital equipment and resources can help learners with additional support needs to improve their skills and competences in literacy and numeracy. Works Cited Australian first Study (2015) Impact of Technology on the Australian Publishing Industry, Media Announcement, https://sawriters.org.au/2015/10/06/new-study-shows-the-profound-impact-of-technology-on-the-australian-publishing-industry/ Gaughran (2012), David, The Death of Literary Fiction, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-death-of-literary-fiction_b_1892006.html?section=india, Grafton (2007), Anthony, Future Reading, The New Yorker, November 5, 2007 Green Press Initiative (2011), Environmental Impacts of e-books, A Green Press Initiative, http://www.greenpressinitiative.org ICF (2015) Literature Review on the Impact of Digital Technology on learning and teaching, A Study conducted by the ICF Consulting Agency for the Scottish Government, November 2015 Lee (2001), Stuart, Digitization: Is it worth it? Computers in Libraries, May 2001. Mangen (2014), Anne, Empirical Studies of literary reading in print and e-readers Mehta (2015), Sangeeta Is Self-Publishing a Viable Option for Literary Fiction Writers? Posted on May 27, 2015 – Interview with literary agent Vicky Bijur Mims (2011), Christopher, Technology Review, Sep 2011 Perry (2014), Stephanie Routhier, Digitization and Digital Preservation: A Review of the Literature, iSchool Student Research Journal, San Jose State University, Volume 4, Issue 1, Article 4 Smith (1999), Aby, Why Digitize? CLIR Publication 80. Washington DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, 1999 The Guardian (2014), http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/feb/14/self-publishing-mainstream-genre-fiction
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AuthorCarlos Fernandez with inputs from Cyril Fernandez ArchivesCategories |