Useful tips for Kindle users

More useful information about the Kindle is available on the Wired website:

How to do (almost) everything with a Kindle 3

Simple tip turns Kindle into ultimate news reader

Ok... still gushing about the silly toy!

Long live books!

My Kindle has arrived and it is truly magnificent. The reader is very easy to use and wonderful to read - the 'paper' is easy on the eyes and the device so lovely to use that it makes you want to read it all the time. Every spare minute! Downloading ebooks from Amazon is a doddle and the 3G means that I can browse for books, or get a new book, whenever and where-ever I like. I already have a number of books that will take me a few months to read!

A number of the classics that have entered the public domain are a couple of dollars on the Amazon site but they are also available freely at numerous other places on the net in the right format for Kindles. Sometimes however, the convenience of getting the book right there on-the-spot is worth a couple of dollars.

The new Kindle also comes with 'Experimental' features - a web browser which although limited still enables you to access your twitter feed, or download books from free ebook websites. It's a wonderful feature and I hope that Amazon develops it further as it makes the Kindle more multi-functional than just a ebook reader. Other experimental features include the ability to play MP3s on your Kindle, and a Text-to-Speech feature.

I love the dictionary too! It's fantastic to wonder about a word and then get the meaning of it within a few seconds. Hopefully my vocabulary will improve, as well as the depth of my reading.

Admittedly I haven't used other ebook readers but the latest Kindle is a wonderful thing. ****3/4

The world has changed... again

I'm getting a Kindle. It hasn't arrived yet but it's coming soon. It's being shipped now and I'm quite excited. Not just because it's a new gadget. But it's also a representation of me becoming even more involved with technology and the ever increasing need to keep up with it.

I had thought that getting a Kindle would not be not a great change... just reading books on an electronic device, instead of printed format. But I didn't realise that the world has changed... people are reading on various portable devices and sharing content and using interesting software that I had no idea about until now. I'm feeling very green.

So far I've learned a lot about e-readers. I've learned that the reason that Australia is offered a more limited number of publications than the U.S. has a lot to do with Digital Rights Management or DRM. I've also learned that I don't have to only buy ebooks from Amazon but can get them from other sources - I just have to upload them onto my Kindle which I can do with software like Scribd or calibre.

If you're looking to find out more about ebook readers and ebooks in Australia, then check out Kathryn Greenhill's blog Librarians Matter.

I should have my new Kindle by Monday!

Online Learning to teach Information Skills

I was completing a survey for QUT and one of the questions was "What skills do you think you will be using most over the next 5 years?". My response was: Skills to create content for Online Learning.

There has never before been so many easy-to-use tools to create interactive learning content in education. Well, that's how it seems to me. Perhaps it's only because I'm beginning to use Adobe Presenter and Captivate that it seems that way. But the tools are great and they produce things of reasonable quality without too much effort.

I think that more library training will be delivered online in the future. This will expand the audience and hopefully make learning easier. I know that I learn a lot quicker when I'm interacting with content, and engaging with it, rather than just reading it or being lectured about it.

I can see a number of positives for online learning or 'e-learning':
* Online collections and journal databases will be used more.
* Students can learn at any time.
* Information can be quickly updated.
* Less paper used as brochures and guides are accessed online.

Negatives:
* Need for up-to-date technology
* Less students may be physically coming into the library.
* Students need to have a certain level of e-literacy to be able to use online learning tools. However, assisting students to gain that level of e-literacy is important anyway. Another negative though is the staff time required to assist the students who require additional assistance to use e-learning tools.
* Students are not always self-motivated, independent learners.
* Creating online learning modules takes staff time, and staff need to have a relatively high level of skill to produce them.

Although this list of negatives is longer than the positives, I still think that online learning is a fantastic thing for libraries to utilise and that the positives are more valuable than the negatives. What do you think?

Moodling with Information Literacy

I was checking out some of the papers at the ALIA Access 2010 conference and enjoyed reading a paper written by a couple of librarians from Sydney Institute, TAFE NSW. The paper is called "Moodling along with Libraries - supporting online flexible delivery in TAFE NSW". The paper discusses the way that Librarians are collaborating with Faculties to create content that assists students with Information Literacy. It is quite an exciting time to be working in the Education sector as there are many fantastic tools to assist with content creation - that look professional and are easy to use. Moodle and Equella are used by TAFE NSW, and a number of Institutes have recently invested in LibGuides to create subject guides. The hype about LibGuides is large, so I'm looking forward to experimenting with them sometime soon.

A Green Tree

The ancient art of bonsai reminds us that it's the little things we do everyday that provide our lives with shape and form.

I was given this lovely little tree for my birthday and I am loving the idea of looking after it for many years. The tree is a juniper and it is already seven years old. Admittedly I don't have a good track record of taking care of plants... but I've got a good feeling about this one and hope that it will thrive under my care.

"Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come."
- Chinese Proverb

The Practice of Sustainability in the Library

I recently completed a TAFE course called "Participating in Sustainable Work Practices" and the course content heightened my awareness of the need to reduce waste. Early in the course all students were directed to watch the online animated video called "The story of stuff". The video takes you through the life-cycle of a product and makes you aware of the amount of resources that are consumed when a relatively insignificant item is produced and eventually ends up in landfill. Anyway, it certainly got me thinking about the amount of 'stuff' I consume and how I can reduce it.

When analysing the way that I worked I found that there was an amazing number of ways that I could reduce waste - particularly paper waste. My colleague and I are now continually coming up with ideas to reduce the amount of paper that we need to use in the Library by redesigning work flows, and storing information on the computer instead of printing and filing it. It's quite a fun game when you really get into it!

Librarians talk to a lot of people in society and we can teach ecologically sustainable practices to those we interact with. Let's teach ourselves to be as economical as possible and help to change attitudes about waste.