n ongoing argument about the Internet is whether or not it diminishes reading. Almost no one suggests that it helps, although my friend Stephen Krashen occasionally comes very close. And the folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggest the brains of the next generation will adapt to the new technology and overcome any disadvantages.

Two prominent arguments against the Web are "monitor resolution" and humans' "click 'n' peak" behavior with online text. On both counts, good news arrived just months after Apple's Steve Jobs declared, "People don't read anymore" (uttered at the beginning of 2008 in the wake of Amazon's Kindle debut). The good news is that all is not doom and gloom with the Web and reading—at least yet.

What if the library were as attractive as Starbucks or Barnes & Noble? Would we visit more often and therefore read more?

True, research shows that reading text of any length from a monitor is much less effective than reading it on a printed page. One major reason is that text on a monitor appears at a resolution of 72 dpi, whereas text on a page appears at 600 dpi. In other words, text on a printed page is six times sharper than that on a monitor and therefore not as easy on the eyes. (For documentation, see Research.) Thus people like Bill Gates say they print out anything they must read that is more than four pages long. But gradually that landscape is changing. Just as television is going high definition, so, too, is the computer monitor, making text easier to read and, if need be, larger upon demand. Amazon's Kindle e-reader is the closest we've come digitally to an actual printed page. That print on the Kindle is super sharp, just like that on a printed page.

The other argument ("click 'n' peek") concerns how little is actually read at any depth while online. In the early days of the Internet, webmasters argued against putting too much on one page because: 1) The longer the page, the longer it took to download; 2) Today's population isn't into depth—just feed them enough to give them the gist— never mind the guts; and 3) Few "visitors" ever went to a site's second or third pages.

Finally—revamping the library!

Now, however, we're seeing encouraging signs that in-depth reading is getting more of its share of the Web surf. Two articles in the same day's New York Times signaled some of the changes.

A week after the New York City Public Library announced a $1 billion expansion plan that included a $100 million renovation of its flagship site on Fifth Avenue, culture critic Edward Rothstein of The Times examined how those plans will pan out. One of his points is the modern library's movement away from the deadly staid to vibrating modern; that is, from Carnegie mode to Barnes & Noble mode.

His initial fear was that the modern library would become just one gigantic entertainment center. "But then, after I visited the 78,000-square-foot Bronx Library Center in Fordham — mentioned as a model for the future lending library on Fifth Avenue — the tension between opportunity and temptation seemed a bit less overwhelming. Despite the Bronx Library Center’s streaming ticker-tape-style red lights highlighting library activities above the teenager area and checkout desk; despite the array of desktop computers in heavy use; despite the library’s stock of video games and DVDs; despite all that evidence of 'democratization,' the Bronx center is also too vital, too well stocked with possibilities for all ages, too inviting to browsers, readers and workers, to be characterized as a countermove in the evolution of public libraries. It offers an alluring mix of entertainment and enlightenment." Rothstein's entire article, both revealing and encouraging, can be found free online at: "With Expanding Library’s Promise, Concern About Its Purpose," by Edward Rothstein, The New York Times, Mar. 17, 2008.

If Rothstein was impressed with the Bronx Library branch, I can imagine his awe if he visited the Cerritos (California) Public Library, as I did a few years ago. The photos below attest to the building's modern design but only partially explain its label—the "experience library." What also can't be seen is the incredibly high usage rate by this multi-ethnic community. (More photos are available at the library's online site.)

Of the six people in the reading lounge of the Cerritos Library, half are also working online.   The Cerritos children's room is a far cry from the staid rooms of the Carnegie-era. Cerritos' computer lab looks more like a Star Trek set than the traditional library.

While Rothstein's essay was appearing in the Arts section of The Times, the Business pages were featuring yet another encouraging piece of reading news from the Web: Increasingly, weekly magazines are not only making their issues available online, went the report, but also their entire archives, dating back decades—and all for free. Leading the pack was Time magazine which has had its archives freely available for several years, dating back to original issues in 1923. Now magazines like Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, as well as the daily New York Times, have followed suit.

What makes the trend meaningful is that the articles/issues are available for free, as opposed to a year ago when institutions like The Times were charging $50 a year or a subscription price for access to the archives.
Few people outside the publishing industry are aware that little of a publication's profit comes from subscribers; the real profit is in the advertising. The conundrum is that advertising rates are determined by subscriptions or readers. It works like this: I, magazine publisher ABC, will deliver to you, the advertiser, 750,000 pairs of eyes each month. In return for such viewership, you will pay me X-number of dollars per inch in advertising.

'You can't save souls in an empty church.'

In its infancy, when bandwidth was small or slow and dial-up was the most common connection, a site couldn't deliver enough eyes to the advertiser to make it worth their advertising dollars. As soon as the Web went broadband and most people in the nation had such connections available and thus weren't worrying about tying up their phone lines for long periods, people began spending more time online, while digging deeper for information. Visitors to sites went from thousands to millions and stayed longer per visit.

With those kinds of numbers to offer advertisers, more publications offered free-rides and thus increased their visitors. Within a month of changing its archives (from 1990 to the present) without fee, the Washington Post's traffic quadrupled.

For students, as well as serious readers and writers, the easy access to in-depth text, complete with the comforts of their own home computer, is a major plus for reading and study.

Yes, distractions will continue to be available, like music and video games, but, like the library's coffee bar enticements, once you have the audience visiting your site, there is a greater chance of their wandering into heavier and deeper waters of thought. As for humans' "click 'n' peek" behavior, deeper reading cannot occur until there are more visits and longer visits. (Or, as adman David Ogilvy once observed, "You can't save souls in an empty church.") Free archives are an enticing impetus to making such visits happen.

The Times article on publications' free archives can be found for free at: "Dusting Off the Archive for the Web," by Richard Pérez-Peña, The New York Times, Mar. 17, 2008.

nd finally, one last example of how the Internet can and does magnify the reading and thinking of some users. On December 22, 2007, I was driving home to Massachusetts from my grandchildren in New Jersey and listening to WNYC-FM (an NPR affiliate in New York City). As luck would have it, the guests that day were discussing the bleakness of the reading landscape in America these days. The first guest, one of my personal favorites and whom I had missed, was the Pulitzer-winning historian David McCullough. The second guest was Caleb Cain who was talking about the article he had just written for The New Yorker magazine, "The Twilight of the Books," which included findings about national reading habits from in the most recent National Endowment for the Arts report.

Upon reaching home, I downloaded the two interviews to my iPod so my wife could hear them both and I could catch the McCullough interview. Second, I read the Cain article from The New Yorker site, free. In the course of the McCullough segment, he observed how much self-education is accomplished by just reading. He then bowled me over by mentioning in the most glowing terms a writer who had made a huge impression on me in my late teens with his 1960 bestseller A Distant Trumpet—Paul Horgan.

In McCullough's words : "A man I admired more than almost anyone I ever knew was the writer Paul Horgan. Paul Horgan never went to college and yet he was the most cultivated, the most deeply, widely read man I ever knew. And he used to say when he'd greet friends—instead of saying 'How are you?'— he'd say, 'What are you reading?' He wasn't asking that in order to test you. He was asking that to get going on a subject of mutual enthusiasm, to get going on something he might learn from. I think that's a very good way to look at it. 'What are you reading?' We are what we're reading right now as much as what we were reading in grade school or high school. It's a lifelong thing." (Links to those WNYC interviews can be found here at WNYC-READING.

Beyond the immediate meaning of McCullough's words, the interview got me thinking again about Horgan and how much I had loved his writing. Wondering about his life, I went to The New York Times archives and found both his obituary and a review of his last book, America East & West, reviewed in The Times by none other than David McCullough. Reading the review sent me to Bookfinder.com in search of that 1984 volume and found a copy for $5, including shipping. (There was no need to buy A Distant Trumpet—I still have my 1960 copy, as the dust jacket [above right with Horgan] attests.)

How much of the reading I did in the wake of the two NPR interviews—Horgan's America East & West and Cain's New Yorker piece—would have been as easy to do without the Web? First, everyone with a Web connection could hear those interviews but otherwise could not (ubless they lived in thelimited range of WNYC) and therefore would not have been directed by Horgan or Cain. Second, to find the out-of-print copy of Horgan's books without the Web would have required a library search and interlibrary loan (much more time than the Bookfinder.com purchase (and about the same amount of money if you count gas prices). The New Yorker piece required no wait time—it was instantly before me via the Web. The same can be said for the concluding anecdote below.

In late February 2008, W. C. Heinz died at age 93. Heinz had been the last of the great sportswriters of the Fifties and ranked in his day with Red Smith and Jimmy Cannon. In one of the obituaries, a long profile by Jeff MacGregor of Sports Illustrated was mentioned. So off I went to the SI Web site and immediately read the seven pages. Another Heinz obit mentioned a book that collected the best of his old magazine pieces, American Mirror. Bookfinder.com located a copy for $3.57, including shipping. I'm not into instant gratification but I recognize the importance of those two human windows to learning: opportunity and interest. They are not always wide open, so it behooves us to use them when the opportunity is there. The Web can open those windows wider and more often than does the absence of the Web.

So allow me a parting question: "What are you reading—online or anywhere else, for that matter?"