Reading Comprehension, eBooks, and Libraries
I've completed two books recently: Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land and Frank Herbert's Dune: Messiah. Following my completion of said books, it occurred to me that though Herbert's was certainly shorter than Heinlein's, I felt I retained more information from the latter. The one difference that I could think of is that I read Dune as an ebook and Stranger as a paperback.
A quick skim of the available research seems to confirm my experience. A smattering of articles claim a smaller statistically significant impact on reading comprehension from digital reading than physical, that the print medium is superior for deep reading compared to digital texts (tablets), with one study that explores reading comprehension benefits from interactive ebooks even conceding in its abstract that "printed books are most conducive to learning from longer, more difficult texts". So the answer seems to be: physical books are superior for long-form comprehension, and digital texts are better for quick, "shallow" learning.
Why is this? I will be the first to admit that I am not really any form of expert in any field (not enough experience.) Despite this, I will offer my pet theory, based on the anecdote offered at the beginning. One of the most critical facets of reading comprehension is inference, in my view; one respect in which paper books are far superior (or, IMO, tablets/PDFs are superior to dedicated eReaders/epubs). If one doesn't understand, say, a foreshadowed event, it's easy to flip back in the book and find the section, read it again, smack yourself on the forehead, all while keeping a finger on the page you came from. Such a task is not so simple in digital. Leave a bookmark at the page you were on, tap back to the page, reread, and teleport back to your bookmark. What takes 5–10 seconds physically takes 5ish seconds per page turn on an ereader, due to the low refresh rate. Maybe it's just me, but the quickness of that action really matters. Most of the time, on digital, I find that I never look back at all—a substantial difference for a reader whose eyes sometimes move a bit faster than their brain.
So the apparent answer here, if I want to comprehend each book I read to my fullest capacity, is to read paper books. Easier said than done, unfortunately. The library system where I live is seemingly quite robust, but every book that I want to read (i.e. popular SciFi and Fantasy, and classics, mostly) has an ostensibly short waitlist: for example, the single copy of the extended cut of Stranger in a Strange Land is currently taken out, and the four copies of Dune: Messiah are loaned with a waitlist of three folks. But the books may never become available. I have been in line to get my hands on The Three-Body Problem (one person ahead of me for one of two copies) so long that I managed to find a $3 copy at the thrift shop before it became available.
My Solution
All the libraries I have patronized since the pandemic have abolished late fees, which is a noble move to fold back in lower-income patrons and children, who were previously deterred or even suspended by unpaid fees. During writing, I learned that this was a resolution passed by the American Library Association to alleviate inequity. I think this has largely been regarded as a good move.
I myself have benefited from "free" rentals, because sometimes we forget, or are too busy, to drop off a book. Or, more likely in my case, we aren't willing to return a book that we haven't finished, and perhaps bite off more than we can chew each time we do go to the library.
The potentially unintended result of this change, however, is the complete elimination of incentive to return books at all. As a child, I think one of the reasons I read faster (relatively speaking, of course, as children's books are substantially simpler than what I read today) is that I did not have a single dime to spend on late fees. So I would walk over to the library after school and politely ask for a renewal on my loans, or simply devour the book prior to the due date.
Now, let me preface this by saying I'm a cynic, and more than a bit jaded. Relying on people's sense of community and goodwill is unfortunately not the most consistent metric. In this case, I understand that late fees were not actually accomplishing the goal of encouraging people to return books in a timely fashion, but maybe we need to look for some other solution. Replacement billing after a certain period of time, maybe 60ish days after someone places the book on hold (this also could account for lost books, so I'm not sure if libraries already do this)? Borrowing suspensions (this is not a great solution either)? No/limited renewals for more popular titles? I'm not really sure.
Personally, since the Three-Body Problem incident, I don't even bother getting on the waitlist, I'll just look for something else if the book I want isn't available. And then, I do my best to return it by the original due date (or take 1–2 renewals, max.) I suggest you do the same!