Packaged Paper on Digital Devices: Expanding the Professional and Personal Value of eReaders

Packaged Paper on Digital Devices: Expanding the Professional and Personal Value of eReaders
PNLA 2011
Lorena O’English
Washington State University Libraries
oenglish@wsu.edu
Twitter, Skype, Yahoo/GTalk IM: wsulorena
http://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!)

I Discovered calibre…
http://calibre-ebook.com/

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://xkcd.com/208/

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: 2EPUB http://www.2epub.com/

Online Converters: Epub2Go http://www.epub2go.com

Online Creator: GrabMyBookshttp://www.grabmybooks.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 mobile
formats could be used to
repackage/create useful
resources 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)

TheUser Community
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.
E-reader Ownership Doubles in Six Months http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/E-readers-and-tablets/Report.aspx

They *Like* Their Smartphones!
A lot…
Smartphone Adoption and Usage http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Summary.aspx

Focus on College Students
When it comes to accessing
the internet on a mobile device
such 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.
College Students and Technology http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/College-students-and-technology/Report.aspx

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
eReaderxTras: 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 InstaPaperand Kindle ($)
ScrollyFox – autoscroller (FF only)
InstaPaper – save websites/documents for later
Works with InstaPaper, and the Kindle and iPhone/Pad

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Packaged Paper on Digital Devices: Expanding the Professional and Personal Value of eReaders

by Lorena O'English on Sep 12, 2011

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