packaged paper on digital devices: expanding the professional and personal value of ereaders
DESCRIPTION
The PowerPoint from a presentation at the 2011 Pacific Northwest Library Association conference.TRANSCRIPT
Packaged Paper on Digital Devices: Expanding the Professional and Personal
Value of eReaders
PNLA 2011Lorena O’English
Washington State University [email protected]
Twitter, Skype, Yahoo/GTalk IM: wsulorenahttp://libguides.wsulibs.wsu.edu/edocs
Me…
• Kindle 2 for Christmas 2009• A love of Victorian/Edwardian novels (some of
which were not Kindle-friendly…)– Jesse Bell/Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
• Lots and lots of papers under my desk at work…– Reports– Articles– Reports
(If you like L.M. Montgomery or Louisa May Alcott, you’ll probably like her too!)
calibre and Metadata
calibre and Conversion
Limitations of calibre
• It’s easy, or its hard.• No columns or non-image
tables (flowing issues)• Word docs must be saved as
RTF or html• Updates require a reinstall
(although most are not essential)
• Not really for creating complex, full-featured ebooks
• DRM?
http:
//xk
cd.c
om/2
08/
Advantages of calibre
• Ebook/document/webpage conversion to read on ereaders and smartphones
• Can set up auto-delivery of online blogs, newspapers, and more.
• Works with many, many ebook formats• Metadata, searching, organizing, catalog• Archiving• Can use as it a server and access your etexts wirelessly • Developer and user community (mobilereads)• DRM?
So Of Course I Blogged About It (and newlettered about
it)…
Kindle + Calibre (with a dash of Samsung Moment...)
Another 'Lorena's Look' – More on Ebooks and Ereaders
Online Converters: Epub2Go http://www.epub2go.com
Limitations of Online Converters and Creators
• Limited file size• Limited formats – input and output• Your stuff is on their servers – watch out for
proprietary or sensitive information!• Some services look a bit dodgy…read
comments and reviews carefully!
EPUBReader (Firefox add-on)https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/epubreader/
Content Repackaging and Creation
• Libraries tend to focus internally on process and externally on content • Interested in how mobileformats could be used torepackage/create usefulresources for the WSU community – documents,rather than books….
Why Convert or Create for eReaders and Smartphones?
• Always with you/your user/your worker/your student/etc.• Device/app affordances: bookmark, highlight, annotate,
text-to-speech, share• Edocs (EPUB/mobi) flow better than PDF files on a smaller
screen• Font sizes can be changed; background can be changed
(white on black, sepia)• Once downloaded, they don’t need a Web connection• They can’t be edited• Sustainability issues: paperless
Issues
• Can’t require people to load your edocs on their devices
• Device idiosyncrasies• Complex formatting doesn’t work well
(columns and text tables are right out…)• They can be annotated and more if the device
allows, but can’t be edited.
I Offered a Class (via WSU HRS)
The User Community
E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/E-readers-and-tablets/Report.aspx
The share of adults in the United States who own an e-book reader doubled to 12% in May, 2011 from 6% in November 2010.
They *Like* Their Smartphones!
Smartphone Adoption and Usage http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Summary.aspx
A lot…
Focus on College Students
College Students and Technology http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/College-students-and-technology/Report.aspx
When it comes to accessing the internet on a mobile devicesuch as a laptop or cell phone,young non-students (79% of whom are wireless users) are a bit less likely to go online wirelessly than either under-graduate or graduate students, but notably more likely than the overall adult population to do so. These differences in wireless usage between students and non-students are largely driven by differences in laptop computer ownership.
Documents and Digital Deviceshttp://libguides.wsulibs.wsu.edu/edocs
• Documents and Digital Devices: Home• Devices and Reading Apps• Acquiring Documents • eBook formats• Converting documents• Organizing Documents• Reading Documents• Social Reading• Creating and Editing eBooks (from scratch)• Coda• eReader xTras: Add-on Tools and Services
A Work in Progress!
Class Comments and Interests
• Will definitely use personally, and can see many apps for work, to carry policy docs, etc., with me..
• Calibre is far more powerful than I had realized or explored.
• You really have me thinking in terms of professional!
• Interests: finding free books, OverDrive, device advice…
An Example: Word to EPUB viewed on an iPad
Closing Thoughts
• Is a journal PDF (without ADE) an object under DRM?
• Issues of the digital divide (although less for smartphones)
• It’s still all about the Betamax…
• Power and charge…Lorena's Power Law of Smartphones: Most of the time when you really need your smartphone, it will be out of power.
eLagniappe: Screenreading Tools
• Readability – ease of eye– Works with InstaPaper and Kindle ($)
• ScrollyFox – autoscroller (FF only)
• InstaPaper – save websites/documents for later– Works with InstaPaper, and the Kindle and
iPhone/Pad