Final Exam

Deep web: Article "Distad, M. (2011). The Future of Print: The Book. Feliciter, 57(5), 182-184" found on the EBSCOhost database which I used through the Clark Cannel Library. I used advanced search, entering words: future print book  by title and distad by author. I got immediate result, then I pushed full version button and got the text.

Evaluation of the article

Authority -- The article's author Merrill Distad is an author, editor and librarian. He is the professional we can trust.

Sources – The article is published by Canadian Library Association. The author gives interesting historical references, research data from longitudinal study of educational achievements, statistics from Amazon and his University book store, which could be a primary source.

Purpose -- The author tries to prove that hard-copy will not disappear. They will exist along with e-books.

Evenness -- The article is balanced. Both sides of the problem are outlined.

Coverage – The topic is covered with good proofs and references.

Timeliness – The article is published in 2011, so it is still very relevant to the topic.

Overall the article meets the ASPECT criteria for credibility. The author is clearly qualified to write on the topic. The article is recent and the author uses statistics and data to back-up his points. The author see not only the problems brought by new technologies but the benefits either. 

Open web: Article "Morrison, E. (2011, August 22). Are books dead, and can authors survive? The Guardian." found on guardian.co.uk.com using Google search engine. This was the fastest way and I used it successfully entering the name of the article in the search box.

Evaluation of the article

Authority -- The article's author Ewan Morrison is a professional writer.

Sources -- The author includes some articles through links in the body of his article. If you look at these sources it’s getting clear that they are mostly opinionated (articles from newspapers). They are not based on a deep research. The article is not sited properly. Nevertheless, some of his sources are reputable (Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Wired Magazine).

Purpose – The author insists that e-books will soon make hard-copy books and writers themselves obsolete. His purpose is to attract readers’ attention to the problem of prints.

Evenness –The article is opinion based, so it has a clear prepossession towards the author's opinion.

Coverage -- The article cover the topic but describes only the negative effects of the digital world and don’t mention the benefits.

Timeliness – Article is current. It was published in August 2011.

For me, this article is not credible enough because of poor reference to sources and the quality of sources. Also the article is not balanced and shows only negative effects of the digital world. It could be used as a demonstration of existing opinions in the publishing world. 

Article summary: The Future of Print: the Book.

Merril Distad explains in his article why he feels that printed books will never disappear. He draws upon historical proofs to show that the opinions about disappearing hard-copy books exist for a long period of time. As it didn’t happen before, it surely will not happen now.

He feels that people emotionally are connected to the tree-books. Nothing can replace the feeling of touch to the book, the smell, the convenience to read from paper vs from screen. And I think he is right. Even if you look through our class discussion on this topic, you will see that most people prefer hard-copy books to read because of these reasons.

I liked Distad’s opinion that there is the place for both e-books and printed copies, that technologies bring not only the problems but also the benefits. Portability and easy access to great variety of literature and information itself give the room for electronic reading devices.

The author makes a good point about importance of publishing books for children and education. Parents have to keep books at their homes, if they want the kids to be successful in education and life. Distard insists that “presence of books in homes creates readers… “ and “the future of printed books is in hands of today’s children.”