I had to go to the Central Branch of the Forsyth County Public Library last night. The basement is about half empty. Much of the library expansive library collection has been removed. It’s for sale, as our story this morning noted.
There is something incredibly sad about the process. In the quaint old days before the Internet, the magazine archives at the library were the place where I did much of my research. It was an impressive collection. I don’t think we would have been able to report our mammoth history of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., known as Lost Empire, without it. I’ll be honest. In recent years, I haven’t used it as much, but I took comfort in knowing it was there and from time to time killed a few hours researching this or that.
Our information era is a scary place. We have more information than ever available at our fingertips. And with a few clicks you can often get to exactly the article you are looking for. But here’s what I fear is being lost along the way. It’s the art of browsing, and the joy of serendipitous discovery. Of going looking for one thing and ending up completely entranced and captivated with something else.
It’s true that NC Live, which has a vast collection of magazines online, is a wonder. But it’s not a replacement for what was there. The information you get is only the text. You don’t see the pictures. How a story was played. The ad on the facing page, and the really cool story that is just before it.
This is just one more example of how the Web is changing our world and changing journalism. I’ve always thought that journalism is a combination of exertion and observation, learning to recognize both patterns (i.e. trends) and non-patterns (things that don’t look quite right). And as information gets ordered up just the way we asked for it or somebody else asked for it, those skills become harder to exercise.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Ken, like you I’ve thought a lot about the loss of “browsing” in the move from print to digital, but the more I think about it I don’t see it as a loss so much as a change in nature. With hyperlinking I think that online browsing still exists, it’s just different than print browsing. You mention seeing the really cool article before or after the one you opened the magazine to read. I often find that I read an article online after seeing its headline, with hyperlink, on the page of another article I originally intended to read. You could argue that this is different than print browsing because it’s likely to be the same subject matter, but if I’m on the Journal site or a magazine’s site, or a TV station’s site it is actually just as likely to be “general interest” as it is in the physical form.
I guess what I’m saying is that browsing could actually be better online if the content creators do a good job of incorporating links, graphics, etc. into their sites. By the way, I think that people who have spent their careers figuring out how to make a newspaper or magazine interesting of interest to many people are well suited to doing the same for online content. It will just take applying the observation and exertion in a different format. Same message, same messengers, different delivery vehicle.
Jon: Those are good points, and well-stated. I agree that online browsing still exists. Where I think the problem lies is with older material that is often divorced from the total package. Archived stories, for example, tend to be just the article, rather than a PDF page or even the issue of the magazine or newspaper. That may change over time.
I have to agree - it’s sad to see those bound periodicals go. I worked as a reference librarian for a few years, and there is something about leafing through old magazines, and the information you pick up from context, placement, and accompanying advertisements that browsing on the internet can’t replace.
I once had a high school student tell me she had to write an essay on how the American Dream changed over the course of the 20th century, and she couldn’t figure out where to start. I suggested she go to old issues of Life Magazine and look at the ads.
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