simultaneously usable by more than one reader , and fully contextualized – but it only does this when unrolled . In its rolled-up form , the scroll provides no random access at all . The book , by comparison – whether closed or open – provides immediate random access to any page , as well as to bookmarks , sticky notes , dog-eared pages and home-made tape tabs . The book ' s second significant affordance is its portability , which makes it particularly inviting for fiction ( scrolls are far less portable ). The book ' s third significant affordance is its spine , which cradles comfortably in the hand and generally makes turning and fanning the pages easy to do .
But for academic reading – both the learning and the teaching of it – the book fails readers on a number of counts . It limits readers to seeing just two facing pages at any one moment in time ; it does not afford a view of the whole . Instead , for every opened two-page spread , there are tens or hundreds of pages hidden in the folds – hidden in the bound stack of signatures – no one of which can be seen until someone turns the page to one of them . With each page turn , the current two-page spread is hidden and a previously hidden two-page spread is revealed . In other words , as a consequence of its implicit design , the book affords only sequential or random viewing of its contents . The binding keeps the book ' s pages hidden . There is no option to spread out the pages , no option to view them laid out in their proper sequence , such that they might all be visible at once . This forces comprehension to take place entirely in working memory , which suggests a research question : How does the book compare to the scroll in terms of the strain each puts on working memory ?
The book ' s binding also limits important interactions between teachers and students . It means that teacher and student cannot practically share a book , but must , instead , each have their own copy – and hence the struggle to ensure that everyone is , both literally and metaphorically , " on the same page ". It means that students cannot gather around a single book and expect to get anything done : Who decides when to turn the page ? Who gets to turn the pages ? Who wants to look back ? Who wants to look ahead ? Who wants to stay on the current page ? Who wants to talk about what ?
Two or more people huddling around a book is simply not a good idea .
But huddling around an unrolled scroll is a different story : There is plenty of room , and plenty of rich sensory access . This is the source of the scroll ' s affordances , the first of which is its explicit presentation . The unrolled scroll ' s panoramic display is complete , whole , and wideopen to understanding . There are no pages to turn ; the entire scroll can be viewed as a whole , or sequentially , or randomly – or by any combination of these . And the quality of random access is far better than that of the book : richly multisensory , rapidly accessed , usable simultaneously by more than one reader , and fully contextualized .
The second affordance concerns access through movement and touch . This can perhaps be best understood by drawing on the etymology of modern words we use to describe comprehension . For example , when a scroll is unrolled , readers can move back and forth along its length , literally surveying ( overviewing , viewing from above , from sur + veir ), scanning ( taking the measure by pacing , from scandere ), exploring ( a hunter calling to attract game , from explorare ), and explaining ( smoothing / flattening / spreading out a surface with the palms of one ' s hands , from ex + planere ) ( Global Language , 2001-22 ; Harper , 2001-22 ). Similarly , there is a constellation of words related to ‘ understand ’ that are particularly useful : nearstand , farstand , firstand , and forestand . These Early-Medieval words remind us that where one stands in relation to something – whether under , near to , far from , first , or in front of – determines what one can comprehend of a situation , and that by changing where we stand , we can add new information to what we already know .
Farstand , firstand , and forestand have fallen from use , but the author is working on reintroducing teachers to them . Nearstand and farstand are particularly easy to pick up on . The author invented nearstand by analogy . It describes stepping in for the details . Farstand describes stepping away to see the context . These words are useful for talking about one ' s physical interactions with an unrolled scroll . They give readers and teachers language for
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