But notorious print constraints frequently reposition nicely as attributes. For example, the much remarked print limitations of onerous revision and fixed and link-less text actually afford the “performative space” needed for effervescent meaning and intuitive readings and re-readings. Perhaps a more effective approach is needed to distinguish print and screen books by weighing their different transmission attributes and by realizing their enlacing interactions.
The mediation of the print and screen book, getting from one to the other, is already efficient and pervasive as libraries have demonstrated for decades. Services of bibliographic utilities, smart search applications and screen delivery have transformed print libraries. So print attributes of fixity, navigational and haptic refinement, materiality, and reliable re-access across time, all pair nicely with screen attributes of immediacy, automated search, electronic delivery, and live content.

Another crucial pair of print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book. The print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that persistently reveal the source and intent of its production. Such features of self-authentication, confirmed with ease of re-readings across time and cultures, give the material book its special role in transmission. But print books resist indexing and have been compiled into libraries only with great effort or with the help of on-line cataloging and finding aids.

By contrast the screen book is self-indexing because the encoding or production process that renders books to the screen also enables their keyword search routines. This attribute is really amazing. It is as if printing ink on paper inherently tabulated the letters and remembered them. However, the effervescent screen books resist authentication. Screen books, like touch screen voting, remain vulnerable and un-trusted with ease of unmonitored deletions or revisions and uncertain provenance. And expectations are very different with screen based research. The content is served quickly while the reader is induced to consume quickly as well.

These are eerie counterpoints. It is as if the screen is filling a transmission void of print and as if print is founding its own more essential, less ramified, role. Simple competition between the print book and screen book is an illusion; each has different function, there are exclusive attributes of each and super-cession is a minor factor. Mirror attributes, rather than contrasts of advantages and disadvantages, have emerged and mutual redefinition is at work. The surge of advance and use of screen based reading confirms its complementary fulfillment in print and advance of print confirms its new dependence on digital technologies.

Now that digital storage space is ridiculously cheap (I recently saw a Microcenter ad for an 8 GB SD card for less than 20.00), I can easily keep every ebook I own on my pocket pc. Currently, this makes looking through the libraries (ereader, mobipocket, and mslit) quite cumbersome. I’d like to have them set up in more of a database type of storage and to be able to browse through unread mysteries, newest acquisitions, all Miss Marple books in order of original publish date, mysteries set in England, or any combination of characteristics I can think of. When browsing through the libraries, or any subset of them, I’d also like to see the covers, jacket blurbs or brief descriptions, and even the first couple of pages, without opening the books.

Most ebooks/libraries look the same as they did several years ago when people were reading them on Palm Pilots with very little storage space. I think it’s time for an update.