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maltatoday, SUNDAY, 2 OCTOBER 2016 47 A special date for all book lovers in the upcoming Malta Book Fes- tival is Saturday 12th November, when a conference entitled Books and Literacy: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow will take place at Sir Temi Zammit Hall in the Mediterranean Conference Cen- tre, Valletta. The one-day conference starts at 9am and will involve a discus- sion between Maltese and foreign speakers on how the printing and publishing of books accelerated the mass education of people, boosting literacy rates globally. As Prof. Milena Dobreva, head of the Department of Library and Archive Sciences, explains, "If we look at the history of organizing information we will see that the humanity strives to organise – and keep for the future genera- tions – its knowledge." She is quick to point out the role libraries have played in the global spread of literacy and reading, mentioning the important role of philanthropists such as Henry Tate, the sugar merchant who gave his name to what is arguably the most famous gallery in the world, journalist and pacifist John Passmore Edwards, who besides libraries also opened hospitals, art galleries and homes for the el- derly, and the great humanist An- drew Carnegie, who used his con- siderable wealth to fight actively against imperialism by investing in education and gave us, among many other things, the world-fa- mous Carnegie Library. Prof. Dobreva says out temporal coordinates place us in a region of profound transformation – our 'today' is a watershed. 'The se- mantic gap' characterises the dif- ference between descriptions of an object in so-called natural lan- guages and descriptions in formal languages, such as bits and bytes. "There is an impressive amount of work done in content based methods which explore how the digital representation of various content – images, audio, video – can be used to identify a particu- lar object. We already use tech- nologies which replace the use of verbal descriptions of what we are searching with examples. "One day the technological so- lutions will hopefully be so in- tuitive we actually will not need to acquire sophisticated skills to use them. So it seems we are just moving towards a wider use of our senses and this transforms the ideas that we need to express everything verbally. I cannot say that this is good or bad, as every process brings its own opportuni- ties and challenges. "The more people use their sens- es in the digital communication, and the less they work with verbal descriptions, the more rapid the decline of verbal literacy will be. This might look too futuristic but we live in interesting times with so many rapid changes!" One of the questions the confer- ence will raise is whether educa- tors and librarians, among other professionals, and parents are do- ing their best to help the young generation acquire the necessary skills and adapt to the use of new technologies. Secondly, there is the internet, or digital space, which hosts the so-called 'open resources'. Free education, as Prof. Dobreva elaborates, has moved into digital space. "But besides this natural development, there is another one which changes the landscape of data and information. There is the newly acquired ease to 'pub- lish' oneself in the digital world. "One unexpected consequence of this freedom is that the gap be- tween the various types of 'elite' culture and mass culture is gradu- ally nullified. In the democratic societies we all may choose to have our digital voices and use them not only according to our level of literacy, but also accord- ing to our wisdom. "But there is as well a darker side. One can read or enjoy mas- terpieces and at the same time to be bombarded by dozens of mean- ingless or even profane messages. The masterpiece, so to speak, and utterly the mediocre -including examples of abysmally bad taste – will coexist in the same space and it clearly takes a certain skill and sophistication to tell the chaff from the wheat. We have not quite understood how these new- ly acquired freedoms will impact literacy and the younger genera- tions." This Week Predicting the decline of verbal literacy Professor Milena Dobrev: "The more people use their senses in the digital communication, and the less they work with verbal descriptions, the more rapid the decline of verbal literacy will be."