Long Live the Codex

Here be the follow up to the last Footnote column I posted on here:

Long Live the Codex

As if you couldn't think of enough names to call me, this month I'll give you another - hypocrite! In April I implored you to look at the world through digitally enhanced glasses. Start a blog, I suggested. Look to the future! I still stand by that missive 100%, even as I now proclaim that a backlash is a'comin.

In a recent edition of Shelf Awareness, a New York Times article was cited indicating that online sales are dropping sharply as consumers are experiencing something they call 'Internet fatigue.' Earlier this spring, an article on CNN.com
highlighted a new Lent trend: students giving up e-mail and social networking sites instead of eschewing the usual sugary or alcoholic vices. Just yesterday, I left my cell phone at home and didn't feel all that bad about it. While these revelations are not biblical in proportion (no fish from the sky nor rivers of blood), the Luddite in me cracks a smile with each indication that there is a limit to the speed of technological change.

I recently received a master's degree in library and information science from a school up in Seattle that I won't mention here in case I set off alarms at the uoregon.edu server (paranoia, another great force perhaps fueling 'Internet fatigue'). In the last paper I penned as a grad student, I wrote about a 100-year-old dictionary and the pleasure I derive from using it, something I called a 'tangible slow-down event.' I think that books will forever provide a similar moment for everyone engaging the world digitally, even the ones lining up at midnight to buy Wii's and iPhones. The fact that college students are already beginning to recognize the limitations of sites like MySpace and Facebook-and are willing to put them down for 40 days-is especially encouraging. Remember, these are 'adults' who can't remember a time when the Internet didn't exist.

How do we capitalize on this backlash? By going back-to-basics, and ensuring that even as we acknowledge the need to plug in, we hone our handselling techniques and focus on the bookstore as a place where the printed word slows us down and connects us to our past. I work in a university store, where four times a year I have to move all my shelves around in order to accommodate textbook lines. How I envy you small bookstore owners your comfy chairs and nooks and permanent displays! But even now I am shopping for chairs, rugs, and desks, happy to provide my customers with a seat even though I'll most likely throw my back out moving this new furniture along with my bookshelves come 'rush.'

Slow is all the rage these days. You all know the bestseller from last year, so I don't even need to mention the title. The Slow Food movement has gained momentum, created to protest the coming of McDonald's to Rome. I see our bookstores as an anchor to the social side of the slow movement. Five years ago, the coffee joints of the world would have laid claim to this title. But let's face it; there is nothing slow about Starbucks and the local coffee independents trying to chase them. Restaurants, bistros, bars, and other popular meeting places can sometimes provide a slow environment, but even in sleepy Eugene during the summer you can't be sure until you sit down what you'll get.

Our bookstores, though, are the ideal place to promote slow. After all, we've had years of practice ourselves. This summer, now that the dust has settled from 7.21.07, join me in trying to think of new ways to encourage customers to stick around, sit down, and go analog. Better yet, be sure to do so yourself as often as possible. After all, when the @#$% comes down, much like the survivalists building their bunkers in the woods, we'll become the experts.