How do we promote reading habits of new generation specially with traditional document

[Rajendra Kumar Panda]

After booming digital revoultioin, now the next gereration children are devoid of reading hand held books, as a result it poses a threat to traditional Libraries and their survival.

[JasonLibrarian]

I'm sorry, but statements like this tend to rub me the wrong way. To consider digital information a threat to libraries is ludicrous, in my opinion.

The codex has been around for centuries, it's true. However, times are changing. The very nature of information has changed in the Information Age. Check out these very enlightening videos--created by a cultural anthropologist--for something to think about:

The Machine Is Us/ing Us
Information R/evolution

Think also of the printing press and the impact it must have had on those monks who spent hours illuminating and scribing all sorts of documents. This is the same type of shift in thinking. If anything, e-books will make texts accessible to that many more people, much like the printing press did in the Middle Ages.

It will probably take years for print collections to become rare and digital collections to be the norm. Technology that allows us to read electronic text is improving all the time. (Keep in mind, however, I'm not suggesting that Amazon's Kindle or the Sony Reader are the be-all, end-all of this technology.)

I prefer a vision of the future where libraries--that is, digital libraries--exist so that users can download the text of their favorite novel, chat with a reference librarian to get an answer to their questions, or interact with information in a myriad of other ways. It's not a threat if the library isn't a physical space! We, as information mediators, need to stay abreast of the changes happening around us, or else drown in the wake of Progress.

[Rajendra Kumar Panda]

Thanks for enlightening, however, this threat is not towards the role of Librarian as information facilitator in a Information Age of digital revolution, We can look back the genesis of Librarianship starts from traditional books, which is becoming a extinct (rare) species in coming days of eRevolution. It is duty of Librarianship to preserve its traditional stock in trade alongwith new one e-books.

[W Greg Taylor]

Some good points made above, but - at the risk of being blase - I don't see any evidence that printed books are at any risk due to new technology, at least during my lifetime - and I remember a world before cable television no less.

Based on my front-line experience, there is a huge demand for printed books. Granted, a minority of this demand is coming from younger generations. But then again, when I was a teenager and a student in my twenties, reading was definately a minority interest. And, if I'm not mistaken, book sales have increased and public discussion of books has increased during the intervening twenty years.