Online Vs Print Publications

Education begins from home, but for formal education one has to go out and join institutes like schools, colleges, or coaching centres. When it comes to formal education, books play a vital role and no education can be complete if there are no books. Books had been the main source of information and have been trusted for this purpose since generations. We can still come across people who trust on only written documents rather than online ones.

But, with the changing time, this concept is also changing at a rapid pace. Advancement in technology and easy access to Internet has forced the print publications to sideline. Today, there are so many sites where hundreds of thousands of books are available online and anyone can access them for free, so it has become easy to read these books, make notes from them, and keep them for future reference.

This is not possible with printed books. Again print publication is losing its relevance because it is expensive, difficult to store, carry, and sometimes difficult to find in stores. Be it a textbook, magazine, newspaper, or any other thing that anyone would like to read, everything is available on Internet. Easy access to net has given a kind of freedom from running from one shop to another for a particular book or magazine. Availability of computers and laptops at affordable price has also come as a deathblow to print publications. Computer education is also adding to worsen the situation for printed material. Even a family with average income can buy a computer today. It is not that affordable computers and computer education are not good but the blow that they have given to print publication is really a matter of worry.

Importance of Internet and other modern technologies cannot be denied but we should not forget the importance of print publications. Whatever we know today about our past is because of two things, manuscripts and architectural evidences. Has it been possible to know about the teachings of Lord Buddha if Tripitaka or Pali Canon had not been written and preserved? The worst part of modern technology is that any online journal site or online ebook store can be attacked by hackers with virus or any other unwanted elements very easily. If a site gets hacked, all the material available on it can be deleted in seconds. But print publication is safe from this.

But on the other hand, print publication is also not safe from several things like fire, termite, water, etc. All these things can destroy the printed records, so both print and online publications have their own significance. Still print publication is in practice in the form of journals, novels, academic books, encyclopaedias, magazines, newspapers, etc. and it will continue to be there till the end of times.