Books are  traditionally known as a printed work consisting of pages glued or sewn together. However , nowadays, paperback books are dying because of digital technology. Ebook for instance,  are mostly preferred by students because it’s more affordable and easier to use. Even though some people don’t like reading books on their computer/phone screen , many materials culture like books are being digitized. After going through “The art of google books” and “Book Traces”, I’ve came up with some interesting points. First , I believe when we preserve texts digitally , we loose the original form and others features. For instance, authors when they write their primary source have a specific type of paper in which they are writing in or another specific feature. However, taking a picture of a primary source is not the same as having the actual document in front of us. By having the original form, we could paint pictures in our mind to understand better the author. I think it’s important to have old books digitized  to let others know about history or others civilization. However, I would always prefer a printed book over an E-book. This is because i work in a bookstore and i read a lot. As a result ,  I know how focus i am reading a printed book versus an E-book. I would easily get distracted reading on  my phone , when i received a text message or any other type of notifications.

According to the pictures on “The art of Google books”, we could see that some pictures failed to represent the actual book. The distorted longitudinal tables of longitude and latitudes is what i considered bad quality photography because the data  is misshapen , which makes it hard to understand.For Instance , the patterns of the book’s content, the colors , the texture of the paper , the size of the words looks different and fails to represent the actual book. Even though i don’t know how the original book looks like we could tell the images are bad quality. Here comes the question of what get erased when we aim to preserved hard copies of the actual form? . I think it’s the originality, the art , the beauty and any other features that the main author used to publish their work is lost. What is left of it ,is just a digital gallery , who tells us less the essential of their work , but  prevent us from thinking deeply.

Looking at old families books, i’ve realized that in most of them , they are some notes , index card left in them. Some are marked by names, important dates and signature. My mom, would usually sign all books or mark her initials. When going through this , it’s brought back  memories  of my mom (RIP) , and childhood. From this books, I allowed myself to travel back in the past to my native country and it’s feels great. What i’m saying here is that digitizing is good to preserve books but having an actual printed version of a book is better and more reliable.