The foundation for consciousness is the past, which serves as a reminder of universal human truths. History, who we are, whence we hailed from, how we existed, what we achieved, and how we did it—is being preserved through book conservation. We must maintain literature since we should not lose history or forget it. And thanks to digital technology, it is simple to keep the past described in books, eliminating any possibility that the records would be lost in catastrophic disasters. While preserving, advancing learning techniques by learners can be easily implemented by the integration of digital technology as well.
Our ideas, ways of thinking, expressions, understanding, emotions, works of art and science, and reasons for loving are all stored in libraries. Books and written texts directly express our views more than any other artifact. They make our identities, actions, and motivations public. Books are the actual, enduring record of our previous ideas. Focusing mainly on the Library of Alexandria, the museum and library held many accounts in its halls spanning from Alexander the Great’s achievements, including his many exploits, to all those who succeeded after him (Deprez). Hardly anything endures eternally; everything ages and fades, including books.
Books’ construction elements, including leather, paper, ink, glue, and the medium comprising the texts and illustrations, degrade due to various circumstances. Unfortunately for the case of the Great Library, as it was the custom of the then civilization, it was among the casualties of war, as the rich history depicted in papyrus scrolls within its halls was consumed by fire (Deprez). It goes further to almost being completely wiped off from history since the library’s ruins cannot be traced in the modern world.
Being considered the greatest library of the ancient world, the Library of Alexandria lost a great deal of history from its destruction. In any event, by ensuring that humankind never again experiences such a catastrophic loss of information, we may still pay honor to it. That is why international enterprises concerned about documenting revived the Library of Alexandria two millennia after it was first built. Initially, in the 18th century, museums replaced the Museum of Alexandria as contemporary institutions (Deprez). Then, in 2002, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) emerged as the successor to the vanished library (Deprez). It serves as a gathering place for intercultural discourse and a center of quality for knowledge generation and diffusion.
As part of its commitment to creating a Universal Digital Library, BA has been developing and utilizing a pipeline for converting physical books into electronic books. Screening, image recognition, OCR, computerized storage, text decoding, and publication are the different stages of this workflow process (Youssef et al.). The BA has established protocols and unique methods for screening, encoding, OCR, and publication during the last couple of years. This workflow has been digitized, allowing for managing the various stages and enabling the creation of ebooks thus far. The BA has resulted in creating and deploying a software system for controlling the development, upkeep, and publication of the entire computer database and a structure for coding electronic versions that permits publishing.
The realm of electronic literature has dramatically increased in recent years. Readers should see this extension with both joy and caution. Exuberance because ebooks have the potential to change reading by enabling more individuals to search, read, and acquire books than ever before. There are grounds for concern since the numerous organizations contributing to the digital book transformation could only sometimes uphold the rights and standards that readers, writers, retailers, and librarians have developed and guarded over decades of involvement with hardbacks (Youssef et al.). The BA aims to help those who find comfort in books to quickly access various versions of them from anywhere around the globe.
Moving forward from historic preservation, digital technologies are best suited for easy learning by students. Since it helps learners develop a perception of metaliteracy, a crucial necessity for operating effectively in a contemporary media context, digital curation may be considered a fundamental competence in higher education (Ungerer). Higher education programs that promote social media literacy are rapidly incorporating digital curation. Teachers should combine formal and informal teaching. As most individuals use curation unofficially to gather pertinent material in their everyday lives, it may be simple to incorporate digital curation into educating and acquiring knowledge.
However, teachers need a lot of knowledge to integrate many unofficial digital curatorial tools into lesson plans. Tenured faculty members’ professional growth may become more aware of the opportunities combining digital techniques in curriculum offers if they receive digital literacy coaching. In this sense, a pedagogy of plenty that considers the fact that material is frequently copious and accessible may ultimately become useful (Ungerer). Similar to how learning institutions were impacted by evolution, librarians in the library are still lagging behind new technologies and are working extremely hard to adapt and survive.
There needs to be more clarity between the technology’s quick advancement and the skills of the librarians who need to adapt to it. This is because the amount of data increased, and the forms that librarians were accustomed to changing. Even the instruments that librarians used evolved from print to more complex formats, including soft copies (Osman and Bibliotheca). New words, such as linked data and especially big data, have recently been implemented in the library sector, just like in educational institutions (Osman and Bibliotheca).
Because they are new and yet complicated for librarians to understand, this necessitates that people familiar with the inclusion of digital technology coach them. By receiving training in this area, technology-competent individuals will better equip educators and librarians to serve learners and researchers by understanding how to carry out their work ethically.
Presently, interconnected networks and digital media are prevalent in most aspects of life. This trend calls for fresh viewpoints and teamwork abilities. People are disseminating content in more and more ways, such as through social networking platform posts, hypertext links of web pages, text and multimedia communications, and online audiovisual material (Fortunati and Vincent). They mostly create highly customized information centers where they archive and arrange web content.
The core of the communication relations made possible by digital technology also consists of sharing, appropriation, and cooperation. The procedures of gathering and disseminating information were analog before technological advancement, but they are now digital (Fortunati and Vincent). People may move freely between sites thanks to their mobile phones, computers, and wireless gadgets, and it is feasible to obtain resources like the internet without being restricted to a particular area.
As a result of technological advancements, society’s members now produce knowledge instead of just consuming it. The availability of the required technologies makes it simpler for individuals to create and disseminate numerous cultural items, such as books. For instance, a Word document helps retain a writer’s content, whether a learner or book author (Taipale). Laptops made it easier to document as they serve that purpose from the comfort of mobilization and accessibility of information about anything made easy by the internet.
Cognitive frameworks resemble technological structures. Different technical frames suggest various ways of understanding technology and various approaches to learning about it. Because of its quickness and excellent textual production, most people find that writing on a keyboard is preferable to scribbling with a pen on paper when it comes to reading and writing (Taipale). Additionally, typing is less expensive because it is easy to write extra statements and remove them later without suffering a significant loss. In terms of reading, people choose to read paper books over brief materials like scholarly articles that they can read on a screen (Taipale). It is highly valued that external elements, such as battery drain or pop-up adverts, which are especially bothersome while reading online, do not interfere with reading on paper in the same manner they do when reading on a computer.
With such an in-depth review of digital technology in education, we can assert that through technology, the preservation of books and any content that holds account of exploits by people can be guaranteed. Technology, as a tool, has only made it easier to undertake research and develop facts about challenges affecting us every day. Progress achieved by humanity presently has been majorly attributed to technology, and more is yet to be achieved since the potential it holds is tremendous. The government and private partners should help include education institutions in integrating technology as learners interact with it, which is a significant component in their life.
Works Cited
Deprez, Guillaume. “The Great Library of Alexandria: The Untold Story Explained.” TheCollector. 2020. Web.
Fortunati, Leopoldina, and Jane Vincent. “Sociological Insights on the Comparison of Writing/Reading on Paper with Writing/Reading Digitally.” Telematics and Informatics, vol. 31, no. 1, 2014, pp. 39–51. Web.
Osman, Rania Ramadan, and Alexandrina Bibliotheca. “The Evolution of Data. From Data to Big Data. Are We Ready for Big Data Technology in the Library Community?” 2018. Web.
Taipale, Sakari. “The Affordances of Reading/Writing on Paper and Digitally in Finland.” Telematics and Informatics, vol. 31, no. 4, 2014, pp. 532–542. Web.
Ungerer, Leona M. “Digital Curation as a Core Competency in Current Learning and Literacy: A Higher Education Perspective.” The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, vol. 17, no. 5, 2016. Web.
Youssef, Eldakar, et al. “The Million Book Project at Bibliotheca Alexandrina.” Journal of Zhejiang University-SCIENCE A, vol. 6, no. 11, 2005, pp. 1327–1340. Web.