Then I found this website, ratedreads.com, that has ratings published for various books, adult and young adult. There were some other sites that came up in my search, but this was the first choice of Google, at least.
I'll put aside for now whether or not I agree with the ratings that they give books and focus on what is happening between the digital and print worlds. The print world creates something, and the online community takes over gaps they see in what has been created.
As you can see in the beautiful image I've created, there are different ways that something that is non-digital becomes digital. E-readers allow a different way of reading things, but the online community adds an extra element. It makes us read things we wouldn't, or not read things that we would. I think this is generally a good thing. The online community adds metadata to print that fills in gaps like not having content ratings.
I see the print and digital as complementing each other here instead of fighting against each other. Maybe the same thoughts could be applied to other categories, like education.
I like your comment about how the print and digital worlds don't have to be opposed to each other. I think it is ironic that we've talked a lot about the lack of filtering and quality control with the internet, but it is only online where you will find a rating system for books. If you go to a library, there are the sections where the books are divided but there really isn't a quality control or rating mechanism; you have to go to the internet to find that. Some people might argue that the fact that a book is in the library means that is has gone through some sort of quality control to get there, but libraries often carry books that are popular with people at the time. Popularity certainly isn't a guarantee that something is of quality, and it certainly isn't a guarantee that something fits our definition of appropriate.
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