Week 9, Assignment #19 Ebooks and Audio Books

This is a very relevant assignment. We are ordering more and more E-things at the library all the time. Electronic journals and electronic resources have been part of the library catalog for many years. We are expecting to be ordering more E-books in the future. I think we have some E-books in the library now, but I'm not sure how to access them. Guess I should figure that out, huh?

My husband has a Kindle, and before that he downloaded e-books to his laptop, and before that he had them on his desktop computer at home. He has long been a fan of e-books. In the laptop or Kindle form, they are very portable, and he can carry around a lot of "books" without the weight or the bulk of the actual book. Somehow he also finds them easier to read, it's just how his brain works I guess.

Personally I prefer the paper version. I like holding a book in my hands, clipping on the booklight late at night, and curling up in bed with my newest favorite book. However, when was the last time I did that? It's been a while. For children's books, I think paper is the way to go. A lot goes into the illustrations in books and choosing the right size format, and the right font, and everything else for kids. The books are educational and a work of art at the same time. I don't think the E-version can capture this, no matter what. Besides, people spend enough time torturing their eyes on computer monitors, and cell phone screens, etc.. Reading a real book is just a better way to relax.

If you are doing research though, e-books are great. You can have all those heavy books in a portable format that is searchable and easy to use. I think for that, they are great.

Audio books, like podcasts, have a place, but I get lost on them. Without the visual, I don't focus on it, and it just becomes something in the background to me. I end up multi-tasking because I need to do something with my eyes. I suppose if you are driving back and forth to work, then audio books and podcasts would be great, but I don't think they'd be good for research, and I probably wouldn't retain much of what was said.

I checked out the resources and at first I felt like the selection was very limited. A lot of classics out there, but not much current stuff. The art books didn't have good quality scans, and something got lost in the transfer to the E-format. However, after doing a little clicking around, I found an ebook everything site that offered books that weren't free, and this site did have current books.
http://www.ebooksabouteverything.com/
Pricing was similar to print books, which always surprises me, but the selection was there. So if you are willing to pay for what you read, then yes, you can find quite a bit. Personally I think ebooks should be cheaper than print books since the publishers aren't paying for printing costs, but what do I know? I think the whole pricing of ebooks is still being figured out, and will be figured out by minds greater than mine.

Are ebooks as valuable as traditional print books? I think they each have their place. Doing research is immensely more easy with ebooks and electronic resources. Relaxing with a good memoir or mystery or whatever, is better with the old print version.

Week 9, Assignment #18 Podcasts

"Hello? Systems? Hi Luke! I,uh, just did something stupid to my computer."

One lousy Disney podcast downloaded to my computer was enough to get a nice big error message on my computer about how I'd exceeded my profile space and needed to call Systems right away to get it fixed. Luke did assure me that this was because the file had saved to the wrong place, but it was enough to give me a scare on the whole process.

I think doing all of these technology things can be a bit draining. Talking to other people in the class, and we are saying "WOW! There is so much! How do we keep up with it all?" Creating accounts in lots of different places, subscribing to blogs, RSS feeds, Flickr accounts, etc, etc, etc,.... and now podcasts.

One thing I don't like about podcasts right away is that you have to download something to your computer to make them work. The act of downloading means that if you download this to your work computer, then you won't have it with you at home or whatever. I guess that's why these things are good for iPods instead. I suppose I could try this assignment again with my laptop from home. I might have better luck with that. I couldn't download iTunes to my work computer because I'm not an administrator, and then once I downloaded Juice or Juicer or whatever, I got the error when I downloaded a single podcast. I will also have to do some more exploring to find the way to send the podcasts to my Google Reader because I didn't see that option anywhere, oh, but I don't think that the podcasts themselves will actually go to the Reader, will they? Just a notification saying that a new podcast is available. Hmm... I wish I had good internet at home. This could be a wonderful way to listen to music, news, commentary, etc, while doing other things. It's just not very practical for me in the limitations that I have since I don't have an iPod.