The death of the printed word, to paraphrase Mark Twain, has been greatly exaggerated. Books with maps, drawings, and pictures allow themselves to be referred to as one reads the text. For example, this proved an essential part to a more thorough understanding of the book The Northwest Passage, a highly informative account of the history of the search for the route to the riches of the Far East. The increased purchasing of the movie rights of books has made the print experience more valuable than ever.
Several examples spring to mind.
The Lost World offered much more plausible explanations of dinosaur behaviors, and locales, which were conveniently dropped or transformed in the movie. Neither TV movies nor big screen revisions have done justice to Melville s Moby Dick. And though I m sure the special effects will be outstanding, be sure to check out Sebastian Junger s The Perfect Storm before the movie comes out this summer. Obviously, digitized rare and expensive books, manuscripts and photographs are using electronic technology to preserve and improve access to materials unaffordable to individual libraries. The Library of Congress digitized collections on the Civil War and The Octavo Editions collection of rare and illustrated books are just two outstanding examples of technology used to preserve the printed record.