David Gray: Strong libraries can co-exist with new techologies

Published on Monday 30 May 2011 21:41

THE report of the demise of the school library and its contents, signalled by Anthony Seldon with regard to Wellington College in a recent article is, I hope, premature.

The importation of the printing press by William Caxton to our shores around 1473 heralded an explosion in learning and the beginnings of democracy through the availability and affordability of the book.

Libraries grew up out of people's hunger for knowledge and have remained centres of learning and scholarship ever since.

As places, they have retained an aura of reverence and quiet study, and for young people in good schools, they are at the heart of intellectual thought and reflection. Their very capaciousness encourages the gradual absorption of information and its distillation into knowledge rather than the rapid summarising and drawing of conclusions which scanning of information on websites can encourage.

No-one can deny the benefits of new technologies and the ready access they afford to all, but caution should be exercised in the too-ready adoption of the iPad or the Kindle to replace the book, since screens can promote a quick, superficial, partial approach to the acquisition of knowledge rather than the slower, more patient, sometimes painstaking approach required in reading a book and often, in re-reading passages from it.

There is also incipient evidence that the reader of the screen does not assimilate information as accurately or as effectively as in applying his mind to a book which always involves steady, persistent concentration, a key to effective assimilation, analysis and evaluation.

New technologies are a boon to our society and a more familiar tool to the younger generations. For that reason, they can be used to motivate and enthuse the practice of reading and the art of acquiring knowledge. They should not do so at the expense of replacing older technologies, such as the book, which, having borne the test of time, has its own, unique

advantages.

• David Gray is principal of Erskine Stewart's Melville Schools, Edinburgh