I’m not one to blog about “tech” however, like a few other people I know, I got a Kindle for my Christmas. I’ve not really been drawn to devices such e-readers (or even tablets such as the jesus pad) before. I’ve mostly been put off by the price (most are over 200 pounds) and the feeling that I was surviving perfectly fine with my trusty 4 year old mac book pro and HTC Desire combo. I must admit, even though I knew I was getting a Kindle, I was skeptical about how it would improve my life and be much different from managing reading from my desktop or even through those old school portable things called “books.”
After 3 weeks using the Kindle (I didn’t get the 3G one as I have a mifi) there are a number of things that I want to note about the experience:
1. When you read a lot as part of your daily routine, it is very comfortable experience.
I love to read. But most of my reading at the moment is around my PhD work – and even then, I’m struggling to manage the sheer volume of literature I need to get through and manage at this half way point of my research. It’s soft on the eyes (but doesn’t work so well in the dark ;-)) It’s really hard to explain (and perhaps considered as a complete random luxury) but being able to hold a book with one hand and write with the other is genius. Even just having the text next to my laptop, without having to balance the pages down with a weighted object down in order to extract quotes and write up notes is making my life a lot easier.
2. Can read more, for longer.
I have found myself being able to read for longer, more concentrated periods of time. Normally I boot up a few .pdfs to get through on my computer, and find myself getting distracted by emails, tweets and other niggling communication matters. Even though it has been the holidays, I’ve travelled a little bit on trains and already I’m finding it much easier to switch off and concentrate for most of the journey (although, I do admit I have a very short attention span if I’m given the chance to be distracted.)
3. You can carry portions of your library around with you without breaking your back.
Again, from the perspective of a PhD student, this is great. Normally on my commute between Leicestershire and Birmingham, I’m packing two or three books – depending on what I may be trying to work on that day. Now I’ve started to arrange my literature by chapter/priority and it’s really straight forward to swap between them. I’m a big fan of dropbox for this reason (when I’m working between home or an office – and on different machines) but this more personal, and again, more comfortable to do as a ‘pure’ reading experience.
4. Annotations and notes
Through working on the #tagginganna project during the summer, I’ve now became obsessed with tagging and annotation of documents used in education. The Kindle lets you mark, annotate and note quite easily (although you do expect a touch screen through using smart phones) – I’m quite bad for scribbling all over books and being a bit slap happy with the old post it notes. The Kindle organises your notes and highlights for you on a separate page so you can work smarter with potential citations. It takes a lot of time to read, properly understand and note down points of interest from academic literature – the Kindle allows to cut out most of that and focus on just reading and note smarter (making the process relatively seamless) – What would be nice if there was a way to sync this with the annotation and notes from software such as Mendeley (which has a lovely highlighting and post-it notting process) but again, I don’t expect that to happen, although anything is possible.
5. Access to literature
I think it was assumed that the Kindle was entirely reliant on what was available on Amazon (which looks to be mainly mainstream fiction – rather designed for an academic audience) This can be a problem as I see it more as a tool for work than one for leisure (although, there are a huge selection of free classics to work through) HOWEVER the fact you can drag and drop files into it – this changes everything. I’m not sure how many actual e-books I’ll actually buy, but if there was a move towards a wider catalogue (with reasonable pricing – i.e. the e-book is cheaper than the physical book) I just know I’ll end up spending some money on it. Furthermore, I’ve been notified that my university have access to e-books now – I wonder how many are compatible with e-readers and the like.
6. The ‘social’
I haven’t got round to sharing anything on the kindle yet. There are options to tweet/facebook notes and quotes – but I’ve not yet seen the use of that yet. I’m not really one to be that ‘social’ with my literature (at least in an open forum) – what I do need to find out is if I can email a marked up .pdf to a colleague- and they can access in that form with relative ease. I think that is the social function that is required if the Kindle (and other readers) are to be used in this way.
7. Multiple Devices
The power of accessing and updating your Kindle account across platforms (from the desktop and smartphone apps) is also very useful – especially when the keyboard is deliberately wee and bitty (which I like, less temptation to tweet) – arrange library, fix stuff and sync with the device. Also, when I don’t have it with me, I can still read the books I’ve downloaded on my computer or phone.
Conclusions:
So far so good – although I’m only just getting on top of the work load after the holiday break. Where I think it will come into its own is when I am travelling and commuting. For example, I’ve just been asked to review some submissions for a conference, and this is ideal opportunity to put the Kindle to its test as a work tool (that must be compatible with what everyone else is doing.) Furthermore, reading takes time (no sh*t) – it’s not like an ipod where you load up tracks and skip through the variety. Taking a step back, using it as a ubiquitous tool where the words in which you encounter are stronger than the technology that you are reading it off (like a paperback) will make or break how I use it. Nevertheless, I’m impressed with Kindle and look forward to trying new things with it.
This is really useful – thanks! I might consider it now – also for PhD.
Don’t get too excited about university ebook provision mate, did you see this post I wrote about some of BCU’s catalogue.
http://theplan.co.uk/how-to-read-an-ebook-theyre-the-future-you-kn
To be fair our librarians were aghast with their own system (and told me off for reproducing parts of the book in my blog post)
Interesting – yes, when I contacted UWS about it directly they said they were e-books but not ‘ebooks’ – although I do know there may be some flexibility in the future.
I found a google book downloader – you search for full books on advanced search and save them as .pdfs. Ok, you can’t annotate them like a ‘proper’ pdf, but you can still take them with you.
Love how you did a naughty with the reproduction – keep it up, I say!
Nice review. They’re good them, Kindles, aren’t they!
Nik