Printed Documents
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Cons
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Electronic Documents
Pros
Cons
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Electronic Documents are becoming very popular among college students today because of their simplicity,
convenience, and accessibility. There is some controversy surrounding printed documents vs. electronic documents concerning
which is more beneficial to college students. There are substantial amounts of advantages and disadvantages concerning both
that neither one should replace the other in the future. However, as the standards of publication set for electronic books
become stricter, the more that these types of documents will become the primary source of finding information for college
students doing research.
Printed Documents have been the only source of information able to be referenced available to students for
decades up until the internet became accessible to them. Whether or not a student owns a computer is not an issue concerning
the ability to access electronic documents anymore because most universities provide students with internet access in computer
labs. Printed documents can be taken by students anywhere. This assists students by allowing them the ability to transport
books with them wherever they go and research information anywhere. Electronic Documents necessitate the use of a
computer that is located in one specific place. With printed documents, they go with you, but with electronic documents, you
have to go to it (e.g. computer).
Printed books allow students to highlight important and relevant information concerning their research
topics. They can make notes on the paper to further their understanding because they can put the idea in their own words. For
example, I had just completed a paper on the early gender socialization of children and was able to stress the point on a
specific page of a book that gender roles are due to socialization and not biology. I was able to refer back to it when I needed
a quote because i had already marked that page and highlighted that sentence. You can't make adjustments to electronic
documents unless you print them out on paper; essentially transforming them into printed documents.
The publishing standards set for printed documents are higher than those set for electronic documents.
There is more effort and time involved with traditional publishing. Publishers for the printed document must agree to publish
a book, whereas an author can 'always' publish something over the internet (Buckingham, 2). Having that ease and
convenience involved in publishing a document that way invited may unauthorized writers to publish, sometimes, worthless
material because it's factual content wasn't reviewed. This is of great significance to Criminal Justice and Psychology majors
because these majors are deeply concerned with factual accounts about human behavior and statistics. Using information in
papers from unaccredited internet sites may affect the quality and value of that paper. Printed documents are revered with
more respect from teachers in these academic fields because there is a better chance that the information contained between
two hard covers are of more factual worth than a document printed out from the internet.
It is, generally, easier to identify an author, year of publication, and publisher from a printed document than
it is to find that pertinent information from a document from the internet. I recently wrote a paper on the evidence left behind
from sexual assault (e.g. rape) crimes and discovered the difficulty in determining the exact authors of internet material. I was
forced to go back to the library and relocate the sites that I took information from in order to find the right information about
the articles so that I could cite them correctly. Usually, the URL's are printed in the right-hand corner of each page of the
document, but a student must often times search for the author's name, year, and who exactly is the publisher, if any?
However, there are certain benefits and advantages to using the internet as a tool in retrieving information
that may, in time, outweigh the drawbacks it poses. Electronic documents provide the student with immediate access to
relevant information about their topic of interest by using internet search engines that search for their topic for them. All the
student has to do is type in what they would like to know about and, in seconds, a variety of information pops up at their
disposal. For my paper on sexual assault evidence, it was a great deal easier to find information about that topic on the
internet than it was to locate books or journals that possessed the knowledge I needed. There is more work and effort involved
in locating printed books for a paper as opposed to the ease and convenience involved in locating internet documents.
An internet site that originally claims to cover a specific topic may also provide the 'viewer' with additional
teaching and learning methods by allowing access to other sites by creating links to that site. Unlike a book, internet
documents allow the user to 'jump' from site to site, thereby, producing non-linear thinking because of those jumps in
searching for information. A students is better able to access pertinent information without wasting valuable time and effort.
There are also diagrams that provide the student with visual learning as well (Hallick, 2). Often there is a Table of Contents at
the beginning of the document that are displayed as links. Those links will take the user to a particular portion of the
document eliminating time wasted searching for a specific topic.
Electronic Documents may provide up-to-the-minute information about continuously changing information
like crime statistics and victim reports of violence. Printed documents, once in print, can't be changed until a new edition
comes out. Internet material can be changed, altered, updated, or deleted at the author's discretion. This is a useful tool for CJ
and Psych students to that they will receive the most recent and correct information about their topics of interest. "I wanted to
add and update and correct my material as I got feedback from readers. I can never imaging finishing a book; all of my books
are evolutions that change and improve over time" (Buckingham, 2).
An obvious benefit to using the internet is that many people can access information simultaneously. The
internet site won't be bust or unattainable if a user is reading it. If someone borrows a book at eh UML library, no one else
can see or reference information from it; there are often time only one one copy of printed books available. This became a
problem when I was working on my sexual assault evidence paper in Criminal Justice because everyone in my class was
working on their papers at the same time and the textbooks on crime scent investigation that were available at the library had
already been taken out. The internet quickly became my new best friend. Everyone has access to all the information that was
on the World Wide Web no matter who is using it.
Ultimately, students who do find information on the internet will print it out so that they can read the
material comfortably and at their leisure. Students end up turning an electronic document into a printed document by doing
this. This can be interpreted as an indication that printed documents are what the student will eventually desire in the research
process. Keeping this in mind, it isn't hard to believe that the printed document will, most likely, never be eradicated as a
source of finding and referencing information. Internet documents are the wave of the future although they still need some
improvement. There are definitely more pros than cons concerning electronic documents and they seem to be the most
convenient and valuable tool
with respect the ease at which college students can access information.
Bibliography
1) Buckingham, Simon. "Traditional versus electronic publishing". Unorganization. [Online] Available usenet: http://www.unorg.com/a203.htm. - couldn't find year published. *
2) Hallick, Richard B. "DNA Profiles in Sexual Assault Cases - evident is often a mixture of epithelial cells and sperm cells" [Online] Available usenet: http://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/181gh/DNA_profile/assault .html, December 1999 p.2. **
3) Hazelwood, Robert R. & Burgess, Ann Wolbert, Practical Aspects of Rape Investigation - a multidisciplinary approack, Second Ed. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fl, 1995. ***
4) Texas Sexual Assault Evidence Collection Protocol "Appendix D: Sexual Assault medical Examination Procedures" [Online] Available usenet: http://www.utexas.edu/cee/dec/tcleose/assault/appd.html, September 9, 1998. **
5) Wood, J.T. (1999). Gendered Lives: Communication, Gender, and Culture. Third Ed. Belmont, CA: Wadworth Publishing Company. ***
* Numbers 1 and 2 were referenced in the paper
** Numbers 2 and 4 are examples of novel teaching methods such as learning
diagrams and extensive explanations about that particular topic
*** Numbers 3 and 5 are examples of hardcover printed documents that were
written very well. The material is presented in such a manner as to fully
cover the topics