Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Final exam

Deep web: Article "Distad, M. (2011). The Future of Print: The Book. Feliciter, 57(5), 182-184" found on the EBSCOhost database which I used through the Clark Library.

Authority -- The article's author Merrill Distad is an author, editor and librarian.
Sources -- Published by Canadian Library Association without visible sources of information.
Purpose -- The author's opinion is that hard-copy material is here to stay.
Evenness -- The article reflect's the author's aforementioned opinion.
Coverage -- I don't see how it applies to this article.
Timeliness -- Article published in 2011.
Overall the article meets the ASPECT criteria for credibility. The author is clearly qualified to write on the topic. The article is recent and the author uses statistics and data to back-up his points. 

Open web: Article "Morrison, E. (2011, August 22). Are books dead, and can authors survive? The Guardian." found on guardiannews.com using a search of the site.

Authority -- The article's author Ewan Morrison has written of four novels.
Sources -- The author includes separate articles through links in his article.
Purpose -- Ewan Morrison is of the opinion that e-books will soon make hard-copy material and writers themselves obsolete.
Evenness -- The article is opinion based, so it has a clear bias towards the author's opinion.
Coverage -- I don't see how it applies to this article.
Timeliness -- Article was published in August 2011.
Much like the first article, the author is highly credible and the statistics, data and other evidence in the article are backed-up by external links. I would say it meets the ASPECT criteria.

Article summary:
I agree with the article's points that with the boom of e-books and online news, hard-copy materials like books, magazines, journals and newspapers may become obsolete. But it seems a bit far fetched to assume that the role of the writer would be affected by that transition. The author argues that the internet will force those who write an article to offer their work for little-to-no cost, making writing an impossible thing to make a profession out of.

But what about screenwriters and journalists, do they not qualify as writers? Movies as a medium has benefited from the technology boom, and the writers of those productions will surely benefit. Internet newspapers like The Huffington Post are rivaling their print counterparts like The New York Times and the Washington Post by offering their articles exclusively online for free. For revenue, internet newspapers use the technique used by their print counterparts, they advertise. The writers for that site are doing just fine it seems.

I would say that the most compelling argument offered by the author would be that there is a shift from printed materials to e-books and websites. This has been seen most recently with the announcement by The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, Louisiana that they would be moving most of their articles online. I can agree that writers may have to struggle as a result to a transition from print to digital, but they will survive. And I'm pretty sure that "struggle" isn't anything new to writers.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, Brian:

    You did a good job locating and evaluating the articles and highlighted some interesting and debatable points in Morrison's article. I hope you are able to apply these skills for future research.

    Have a good summer,
    Andrea

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