Ebooks Vs. Printed Books

By Nicole Bagala

While printed books remain statically popular, people, especially students, are drifting more towards using e-books than printed books in school.

According to a study from the Pew Research Center, printed books remain the most popular format for reading, with 65% of adults saying they had read a printed book in the year before the survey.

“Roughly seven-in-ten U.S. adults (72%) say they have read a book in the past 12 months in any format, a figure that has remained largely unchanged since 2012,” according to the Pew Research Center survey.

But while printed books remain popular worldwide, they are not as popular at Stonehill.

Because of COVID-19, Stonehill College has increased the number of online classes, which has increased the usage of e-books over printed books.

Stonehill freshman Sarah Walsh uses e-books for her classes due to how they make her academic experience easier.

“You can easily find a section or a specific sentence in an online textbook by typing it into a search bar,” said Walsh. “Also, some books allow you to make notes in the online textbook. If you are renting an actual book, you can’t write notes in it, but you can write in an online textbook.”

Walsh also said that using e-books results in less back pain since they eliminate students having to carry heavy textbooks around. But with all the perks that come with e-books, there are also disadvantages.

“If your laptop runs out of battery or you have no internet connection, then you won't be able to access the online textbooks,” said Stonehill junior Tucker Dow. “Also, staring at your computer screen a lot is not good for your eyes. And if you’re working on your computer and you have an e-book, it can be annoying going back and forth between tabs.”

And while a majority of Stonehill students prefer e-books, printed books do have some advantages of their own.

“You don’t have to rely on a device to access it. You have it right in front of you and you can read/do your work immediately,” said Stonehill freshman Priscilla Younes. “You can also bookmark pages in a textbook, which you can’t do on an e-book, and you can flip back to pages easily. And you can resell the textbooks afterwards in order to make some dough.”

However, while some students may purchase a printed textbook for their class, whether they use it or not remains a mystery.

“I don’t know if students use textbooks for my classes,” said Communications Professor Joni Dahlene-Gaudiello. “I've been told by the bookstore that some books come back to them still in the wrappers.”

But no matter which form people prefer, e-books and printed books are both important in their own way.

“I think both are important because they both reach different needs in the community,” said Nighttime Assistant Librarian Kyle Sousa. “You’re not going to find every book in both formats. They could just be either printed books or e-books, so it is important to have access to both. Some patrons might prefer e-books and others might prefer printed books, so we can’t just focus on one type of book.”

Both forms of textbooks can be used, but in the midst of COVID-19, e-books are more highly recommended.

“During the pandemic, using e-books makes more sense,” said Reference Liberian Joe Middleton. “During normal times the decision of which format to use should be based on the intended use of the book.”