[bksvol-discuss] Another look at recorded books

"Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx> · Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:31:09 -0400

Another look at recorded books

By Rich Lewis, August 26, 2004

The question posed in last week's column was whether you could listen to a
book on tape or CD and then legitimately claim
that you had "read" it.

I couldn't quite decide, so I polled four librarians in the Cumberland
County Library System -- Linda Rice, Sally Smith, Sue
Erdman and Susan Sanders, the directors of the Carlisle, Newville,
Mechanicsburg and Shippensburg libraries respectively.

All four agreed that "hearing" a book was the equivalent of "reading" it -- 
and that it was not necessary to feel guilty,
make excuses, or even explain that you absorbed the story through your ears
and not your eyes.

After the column appeared, I got a nice e-mail from Oliver Hazan, the owner
of the California Cafe in Carlisle, in which he
said he was particularly struck by the "thoughtful answers" given by the
four directors.

"It was a revealing column," he wrote, "because those ladies are always
sought after for facts, but seldom for an opinion on
an ethical question. Yet they all replied unanimously, with almost
rabbinical wisdom."

When I wrote Hazan back thanking him for his comments, I said that I had
"thoroughly enjoyed talking to all four of them....
and there was so much more interesting stuff they said than I could fit into
an 850-word column!"

And that's certainly true. The word limit required me to cut detailed
discussions with all four librarians down to a line or
two from each. Hazan's admiration for them would have grown greater had I
been able to include more of their thoughts and
comments.

Which I am doing in this week's follow-up column

Susan Sanders, for example, noted that "the original use for books on tape"
was for the blind "and I would say that the blind
had read those books."

Good point.

And Sally Smith gave a thoughtful explanation about why audiobooks are as
important as printed texts for communicating ideas.

"Librarians have learned over the years that we have to understand that
people are different, have different learning styles
and different ways of enjoying things," she said. "Some people actually
learn better through hearing than seeing."

And you know what? I am one of those people. It has always frustrated me
that I can read and thoroughly enjoy a book and,
just a few months later, have completely forgotten everything about it.

But the few audiobooks I've heard stick in my mind in rich detail even years
later.

Among the four librarians, Sue Erdman was the most loyal to printed books,
the most reluctant to acknowledge that "hearing"
and "reading" achieve the same ends. However, she addressed Smith's point in
an interesting way.

"I am probably odd," she said, "because I do listen to books on CD, but only
to books I have read first. And I am amazed at
how much I didn't remember from what I read before."

So, maybe most of us are not purely "reading" or "auditory" learners, but
need a good mix of inputs to get and retain the
whole experience.

And you can add in "visual" learners, too, for those who do best with
movies.

"That's another learning style," Smith said. "Some people can't make
pictures in their heads by reading or listening, so a
movie may be the way they best understand."

Sanders agrees that movies can be a useful learning tool, but rarely as a
substitute for a story that was originally created
as a book.

"I've read the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy about ten times and consider
myself something of an expert on those books," she
said. "I also love the movies. But I don't consider them the same thing."

In general, movies are a bit of a sore spot with librarians.

"We agonize daily over when parents brings kids in and all they check out
are movies and popular videos," Linda Rice
explained. "We're trying to put out the message, in a positive guilt-trip
sort of way, 'don't just come for videos.'"

Still, Smith maintains, libraries must offer "a little bit of everything in
order to encourage people to use libraries and
move on to new things." A kid or a grownup may come in for the movie, "but
then they may see something else while they're
here. They may decide to read the book."

The bottom line, she says, is learning: "It's the knowledge you gain, not
the method, that really matters."

I ended last week's column with a twist on the reading-hearing debate by
asking: If I read the score of a piece of music, can
I say that I heard it?

I had actually discussed that point in detail with Smith, who reads music
and said that she could "take a piece of written
music and sing it or hum it in my head. I don't know if I would feel that I
had heard it, but I would understand it better."

But the question drew a more decisive response by e-mail from Jonelle Darr,
the executive director of the whole county
library system.

"Any well-trained musician will tell that if you have read the score, you
have heard it," she advised. "Just think of deaf
Mr. Beethoven."

2004 The Sentinel, Carlisle, Pa.

http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2004/08/26/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis01.txt

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