I found that using the deep web was just as easy as using an open web format now that I am educated on how to do proper research. The first article "The Future of Print", I was able to find via the Clark College Library website, articles and databases, then I decided to use EBSCOhost, and did a search against the authors name. It was the first article that came up.
The second article I was able to Google The Guardian and look for articles written by Ewan Morrison, and found the article titled "Are Books Dead...". Both were fairly straight forward to search for, but I know that finding the second article prior to taking this class would have been much easier since I am more familiar with the open web, then the deep web.
A: Authority
S: Sources
P: Purpose
E: Evenness
C: Coverage
T: Timeliness
While reading the article titled "The Future of Print: The Book", I was evaluating the creditability of the author and the material that they were writing about. Authority: Merrill Distad is an Associate University Librarian at the University of Alberta. He is also the co-editor of Peel’s Bibliography of the Canadian Prairies, and a recent author of The University of Alberta Library: The First Hundred Years. I was able to find this information at the end of his article in Feliciter. Sources: There were no foot notes at the end of the article so I would consider this article to be more of an opinion of the author than a researched subject. Purpose: The author has a great purpose to this article. The future of print is being replaced by hand held readers, the paper book it on its way out because of cost and convenience that Kindle and I pads have brought to consumers. Evenness: While reading from a students standpoint I felt the article was written with an evenness to it. There was a little bias to it but you would have to expect that because the author is a librarian, and I am assuming most librarians have a love of books. The feel, and smell, and disconnect to the real world that books bring to readers. As for coverage and timeliness, the article was written in 2011 so fairly recent, and Distad was good about covering the cost, convenience, and changes that Internet has brought to the book industry as a whole.
I probably would not use an article like this if I was writing a research paper as a primary resource, but I would reference it as a secondary source for comparing information that I had found that displayed sources.
The second article written by Ewan Morrison called "Are Books Dead, and Can Authors survive?, was really interesting. I also was thinking of the ASPECT model when I read this article and saw that Morrison has written four books, published many articles, and even worked in television for the Authority part of the article I would say that Morrison knows when he is taking about. Sources: again this article did not directly contain sources, but I was able to do some research against the article and it checked out. For instance the quote from Chris Anderson linked me directly to Chris Andersons pod cast regarding Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Purpose: The purpose of the article is fairly straight forward, readers/consumers are able to get books for free by pirating/stealing the material online. Consumers have a taste of convenience and not they expect that convenience as the cost of the artist, the writer. Evenness: The article was well written, Morrison was able to touch on many points of the online book industry, and how it is changing the ways of how writers are being paid, and how the world of paper publishing as well as TV has changed so much over the last few years. Consumers are able to have their cake and eat it too. The article was written in 2011 so it was Timely. Also the Coverage of the article was appropriate for the topic that Morrison chose to write about.
I would be more apt to use this article by Morrison as a secondary source, but it was easier to check Morrisons information than Distads info. I also preferred to read Morrisons article over Distads, so that is another reason that I would use it as a source over the first article.
I really enjoyed reading the article written by Ewan Morrison. This is a subject that I have been thinking about over the last couple of years as I have watched Boarders and other book stores closing down. I am an avid reader, I don't own a Kindle or a hand held reader. I guess that I am old school, I love the feel and smell of books, and I love that reading a book takes me away from reality of TV, phones, and electronics. I see the convenience and cheapness of the hand held reader especially since I am a student, I would rather have my text books online to save the money and back pain of hauling them around, but pleasure reading I want a paper book in my hands.
Morrison makes some really obvious points in this article when he discusses industries like newspapers, music, and porn. They are available online for free, which is what society expects now. Consumers don't care about the art form of writing literature, music, or preforming. Consumers can go online to Google, YouTube, and even get music from other computers easily downloaded to your i pod. The Internet has changed so much about how we live our lives and how we obtain information. I agree with Morrison that for a huge change to take place we are probably looking at a political interference, which is not always a good thing.
The long tail marketers like Amazon, and i Tunes has made it so cheap and convenient to purchase books and music from them at a fraction of the cost these amazing book stores have no where to compete, which means writers will have to figure more creative ways to market themselves. Writers and musicians are creative people so I don't doubt that they will figure ways to make their art form profitable. Other authors that are not huge named yet can be published and sold for practically free on the long tail, which gets their name out there, but these amateur authors are still not making any revenue.
Books will not cease to exist any time soon, people that are in certain age brackets still like to have their books in hand, and not by some digital reader, but change is coming and it is coming fast. I would imagine within the next 10 years newspapers will be a thing of the past. So much information is available online for the simple payment of having Internet access. The cost of printing on paper just can't compare with posting digital text.
Writers and books have changed my life over the years. I used to read about 15 books a year before I started back in college and I miss reading for pleasure. Writers and artists deserve to be paid an honest wage for their art-form that we exploit. Hopefully changes can be made to make everyone happy, but we all know that never happens.
Megan Fletcher
