The Future of the Book
Imagination & Digitisation
Media Futures Conference
What is a book?
“sadly there are thousands… (of) schools where
the library is still a few shelves in a corridor,
where books are a low priority, where head
teachers believe that all a love of books can
do, is better done by a computer. It should
never be a case of either, or. We need both:
IT and a great library.”
- Michael Morpurgo, Times Online, Jan 2009
What is a library
The laptop is the access point to an
amazing free library
How to promote creative reading
skills for the digital age?
It’s not a matter of page versus screen.
What is if:book
A think and do tank exploring the future
of the book as our culture moves from
printed page to networked screen
…and the potential of new media
for creative readers and writers
Who am I??
> Public libraries as Imagination Service
> Your local point of access to culture
> Helping poetry thrive in Britain today
Bringing Books and People together..
THEN… Creative Writing & New Media
What is a library?
A public private space
A breathing space
An imagination service
A special place from which to view the web.
What is a book?
This year’s iPod moment:
A book is an experience
A container of culture
A bounded entity
A constantly changing
form - from papyrus to
Codex to paperback
Is reading dying?
QuickTimeª and a
are needed to see this picture.
One third of UK don’t ‘do’ books
Readers online don’t concentrate
But the web still relies on reading and writing
Young people want stories, ideas, information - no
problem with books
They like the ‘look and feel’ too
NEED HELP navigating their way
Creative Reading & Writing
We can all publish
We can all respond to
what we read
But do young people
Read in a new way?
“Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind” - Mark Bauerlein
Chronicle of Higher Education in the US:
"When Jakob Nielsen, a Web researcher, tested 232 people for
how they read pages on screens, a curious disposition
emerged. "We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for
big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and
each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for
narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long
as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to
make sense of the facts.""
New Ways with Words
Alternate Reality Games
New Media Writing…
- all need to be on the library map
Naomi Alderman Perplex City
Kate Pullinger -
The web of words
But for how much longer?
Youtube replacing Google for search?
How do we help