The advent of e-books might be showcased by many as the advent of a new era for readers and writers though the ground realities can be vastly different than what catches the eye. As a blog post pointed out, the good old paper books might still hold the edge vis-a-vis their paper counterpart considering that these require little to no maintenance and can last for centuries at a time. In contrast, their digital counterparts require frequent nurturing and upkeeping to ensure they don’t lose their relevance in just a decade.

Among the biggest issues with e-books are hardware and format obsolescence. It’s like the device in which you have stored the digital copies of your books has stopped responding, and it is too old to make any effort to bring it back to life both time and cost ineffective. That is unless you have kept a backup of your library. Also, even if you have kept a backup ready, such plans would also run into jeopardy if you aren’t keeping up with the latest formats currently being used.

As the author of the blog stated drawing upon the experience of ‘tending libraries of digitized and born-digital books’, they would soon be rendered unreadable if they aren’t subjected to a strict schedule of periodic maintenance. That’s easier said than done as the process requires people with the right skills to put in a lot of man-hours to keep the e-books abreast of the latest developments that the publishers have introduced.

Similarly, it is also imperative that e-books stay in tune with the latest technological advances to remain relevant. Take for instance the gradual evolution of the digital storage technology that has evolved from the Digital Linear Tape and PATA hard drives of yore to the SATA hard drives in the not-too-distant past to the more recent SSD drives. The e-books need to be stored in a format that is compatible with the above storage tech.

As it is, the digital storage media too has evolved over time from djvu to daisy to epub1 to epub2 to epub3 to pdf-a and such. Also, while keeping up with the latest optical character recognition technologies is just one aspect that the custodian of digital libraries has to be wary of, taking care of content meant for those with different forms of disabilities can be all the more tricky as that involves keeping up with the ever-evolving reading aids they use.

Then there is still some more work left to be done. That includes cataloging and metadata using advanced artificial intelligence and material learning technologies. This will ensure readers come across the books they really care about, which means arranging the books that cater to the whims and fancies of the readers. That again is easier said than done considering how user preferences can be ever-changing. Speaking of changing, online casinos in Canada are growing in popularity and here you have the option to discover brand new casinos.

All of the above-mentioned tasks require the collective efforts of a dedicated and trained workforce willing to put in tens of hundreds of man-hours to do something that can also be repetitive at times. Also, while it is the age of robotics and AI, it could still be a few years or maybe a decade or two before they take over these tasks from humans. Plus, such efforts can run into a myriad of legal issues as well, unless of course the whole legal framework is tweaked to suit such efforts.

That said, no matter how much digital media might be made to look and feel negative compared to their print counterparts, it isn’t all rosy with paper books. Paper has its own lifespan and depending on the quality of paper, or the print used, print books too can depreciate over time. Plus, they are also vulnerable to the vagaries of nature as well, perhaps more than digital content. They can wear down faster when subjected to moisture, rain, or pollution. Plus, they need to be kept safe from pest infestations as well.

Further, books tend to be heavy as well and they require a lot of physical space for storing. It is for the same reason that keeping a backup of a library is too infeasible to have perhaps ever been tried so far. What that means is, if a library of books gets damaged or destroyed, it could be a herculean task to bring it back to its former shape.

In contrast, digital content is easier to store and doesn’t require a lot of space. It is also relatively much easier to back up a digital collection and have multiple copies of it saved in different geographical locations to mitigate the chances of them getting destroyed either via natural or unnatural causes. All things considered, what is amply clear is that a paper book can easily outlast its digital counterpart when subjected to the right conditions.

Also, maintaining paper books is a lot easier than what is needed with digital versions. However, given the inherent benefits of the latter, there is no way one can rule them out entirely. It isn’t a scenario where one can pick out a clear winner over another. If books are considered a sum of all the knowledge mankind has acquired over the years, we need both forms to succeed if we want to hold on to all that knowledge. After all, we don’t have all the books published over a century ago. However, a concerted effort to keep all books produced so far backed up might be the need of the hour for their safe-keeping for the future generation.

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