"A gift you can open again and again..."

I grew up with books.  I was lucky enough that my parents loved to read as much as I do, and they kept a large stock of books on hand in our family room.  I used to love going to the public library, and every summer I would participate in the library's summer reading program.  I remember that a librarian once questioned if I really read all of the books that I was turning in for credit - she found out when she quizzed me on what each of the books were about!  I agree with the writer Jorge Luis Borges, when he said, "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."  Or Malcolm X, who said, "My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

I'm not just an avid reader, I am a bibliophile in every sense of the word.  To this day, I still have a hard time walking into a bookstore without buying at least one book (see my posts, "Today's word is...tsundoku", "Anti-library", and "Clean your room!").  As Garrison Keillor once said, "A book is a gift you can open again and again."  

I just don't understand how people can read on either their cell phones or a Kindle device.  To this day, I still like to read hard copies of books, short stories, articles, manuscripts, and essays.  I just can't seem to read anything well online.  At least for me personally, my level of reading comprehension and ability to retain what I read is just better with paper versus digital.  As it turns out, I'm not that different from everyone else!

I read a recently published meta-analysis ("Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension") published in the journal, Educational Research Review, with great interest.  Remember that a meta-analysis is a statistical technique used to combine the results of multiple scientific studies on the same topic. By pooling data from multiple, similar studies, investigators can greatly improve the statistical power of the available research on a particular topic.  Here, a group of international investigators reviewed research published from 2000 to 2017 that compared reading comprehension when reading text on paper versus digital media.  The meta-analysis gathered data from 54 studies that involved a total of 171,055 study participants.  They found:

1. Paper-based reading yields better comprehension compared to digital-based reading.

2. The advantage of paper over digital has increased over time (at least since 2000).

3. The advantage of paper over digital increased even further when readers were pressed for time (compared to self-paced or leisure reading).  

There were some additional findings of note.  Apparently, having to scroll through digital media is a major disadvantage, at least when it comes to reading comprehension.  In addition, online reading on computers performed slightly worse than reading using hand-held devices.  

There are a number of other potential benefits to paper-based reading.  Printed books provide a tactile, sensory experience (even the smell of paper contributes to the experience) experience that digital books just cannot replicate. Printed books are easier on the eyes, while online reading can cause eye strain.  Finally, from a sustainability perspective, digital-based reading would seem to be more environmentally friendly, though the production and disposal of digital devices is certainly not without its own environmental impact.  

I suspect that others are starting to catch on.  Books are more appealing to read for a variety of reasons.  Perhaps that's why the big-box retailer Barnes and Noble seems to be making a comeback!