This is a great review of Kindle from the academic perspective published in Inside Higher Ed and forwarded by one of the professors in my MLIS program.
3 thoughts on “The Future of Kindle?”
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Future Librarians and Information Professionals
This is a great review of Kindle from the academic perspective published in Inside Higher Ed and forwarded by one of the professors in my MLIS program.
Comments are closed.
This is an interesting article, thanks for posting Connie. I’ve been following the news and feedback on a Kindle and this offers a new angle. I am a bit befuddled by the author’s point of view – he seems to be advocating the use of Kindle for academics, but the piece is full of reasons NOT to like it. A few pros are really outweighed by the many cons he listed. And reading the comments after the article confirmed that one of the biggest academic type problems with Kindle that I am aware of was not addressed at all – it still lacks page numbers so citation or reference is very difficult (if not impossible) without consulting a print version. Does anyone else agree, or I am way off here?
I would agree with you, Kristi. I bought a Kindle last Spring semester. My main justification for purchasing it then (before they came out with the larger version and dropped the price. argh.), was that my classes were having me read hundreds of pages of PDFs each week, that once I spent $100 on replacing toner and new reams of paper, and could not sustain reading at my computer for hours and hours that purchasing it was way worth it. But, Amazon has still not perfected its PDF application in the Kindle- I find that some PDFs do not transfer well at all- paragraphs and sentences are rearranged, making it difficult to understand the flow of argument. I am also one of those people who remember things on where they are found on a page (usually), and flip through pages to find the info I need to look back on. Flipping through the Kindle is extremely inconvenient and time consuming. Granted, maybe I need to re-develop this particular information retrieval process. But, even with these flaws, I still really like my Kindle and am glad I have it. Like you said, Kristi, the pros definitely out way the cons. At least for me 🙂
I’d argue that the citation difficulty isn’t a big deal, particularly if you’re quoting, rather than paraphrasing. The Kindle has search functionality.