Reading skills in online environment - Pakistan Observer
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Reading skills in online
environment
By News desk - April 6, 2019
Abid Hussain
READING is considered to be one of the oldest habits of human civilization.
Reading revived to many shapes such as Clay tablet, Papyrus calfskin etc but
the arrival of Gutenberg printing press ended such discrimination by making the
printed word available to all. Technology like computer, laptop, tablet, Kindle
and similar devices made it more prominent from traditional setup. Internet
contributed data at enormous speed. It is considered to be one of the most
effective ways of reading skills of our present generation. IT has highly
influenced many minds. In old days people were mostly relying upon libraries
when Internet was not invented.
Now, electronic resources are the primary information source for many
students. Internet is considered to be the useful source of information for many
ways such as it provides efficient and accurate services in time of needs, it
saves time, space, energy and resources, the tremendous escalation of
information can be controlled on the internet. It helps in providing quality
services. It is a source of resource sharing and cooperation. It provides better
information in modern ways. Many people argue that the Internet has
negatively affected the use of the library. But, in my opinion, readers are
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Reading skills in online environment - Pakistan Observer
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increasing widely than ever before and the value of libraries have not yet been
affected. Albeit, Internet has changed the taste of readers, libraries are
changing itself from traditional to modernsetup. In the current scenario, the old
traditional libraries and redundant material are no longer appealing the attention
of users, similarly, libraries are linking themselves with a variety of information
through latest databases.
The libraries and librarians are prevailing themselves with the nature of readers.
Experimenting new technologies compelled librarians to use embedded ways.
Many researchers depend on traditional library setup and the librarians deal
them in that way whereas, the current generation relies more on computergenerated files rather than that of old traditional setup. Many people depend
more on printed books rather than using Internet for information rationality.
According to a survey of the American Library Association, only 8% content in
the form of books and journals has been displayed through the Internet and
92% content has been housed in the library. Researchers are producing
research in enormous rate from only 8% of contents via Internets such as
Google, Yahoo etc. Internet considered to be the luxurious style of reading in
many ways but, reading from the internet has many disadvantages a few are
listed here, reading from the internet is not long-lasting.
Internet disperses people attention in bulk of information. Reading a long time
on Internet damage the brain capacity. Prolong reading on Internet creating
health issues, such as backbone, muscle pain and eye sights etc. Some other
disadvantages include this menace with context to research and researchers
who rely on the Internet. The Internet provides a huge amount of information
which confuses researchers what to select and what to reject. The researchers
must be cautious about the information obtained. Most of the information being
uploaded on Internet are not going through a review process. There is no
standard policy for information to check the accuracy. An infinite amount of
titles, texts and abstracts confuse the researchers. Most of the information is
not reviewed or edited by an expert in that particular field.
Even we don’t know the information which we are reading is authentic or not. A
disgruntled contributor or a child may upload anything on the Internet which
can misguide us. The Internet is one of the powerful instruments for research,
learning and easy access to the material in less time, a great source of current
information, fact-finding and research development in the history of human
race. No doubt it is one of the most outstanding inventions in the area of
communications. Male, female, young and old are intoxicated by this worthy
invention and considered it as a source of information, enjoyment and research
development. But, Health is wealth above all activities. If you have sound health
you have everything. Keeping in mind the aforementioned advantages and
disadvantages one can better understand the way of reading for better
tomorrow.
— The writer is working as Library Officer in Institute of Strategic Studies, a
think-think based in Islamabad.
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