Week 5 – The E-Book

Hi all,
and welcome to Week 5. This week, we’re going to try a library specific activity, and we’ll take a quick look at two collections of electronic books. While I’ll admit that few people like eBooks per se - they’re not particularly comfortable to read, nor can they be transported very easily [unless you’re using a laptop] they do have some interesting advantages. The major advantage is that they are immediately accessible, from wherever the student happens to be. That makes them particularly useful as a last minute sort of tool. Additionally, they’re easily searchable – not just the bibliographic information, but the entire text of the eBook. They also have some interesting features, one of which we’ll look at a bit later.

For this week, what I hope you’ll all do is take a look at a NetLibrary eBook that interests you, record the bibliographic information on your blog, and talk a bit about how useful you think it might be for our users. Also, take a peek at the Concept map in Credo Reference, and give us some indication about whether you think that would be useful.

Oesterle eBooks are available from: http://library.noctrl.edu/books/ - netLibrary is the larger collection of eBooks, and contains the full text of a large portion of the Project Gutenberg free e-text collection as well. Searching is easy, and most subjects are covered, though our collection is limited.

Credo Reference is a collection of 100 reference titles, dictionaries, subject encyclopedias and etc. Take a look around, but by all means, make sure that you give the Concept Map a try. If nothing else, it can serve as a good overview of a subject area, and can give you some additional ideas for search terms. If nothing else, the Concept Map is a fun piece of technology to play with, and make sure that you use the slider for the Link Levels, to add more nodes to the map. I think you may find it to be fun.
We have a few other collections of eBooks as well, and they’re all located on that same page. If you’re interested, give those a quick look, too.
jjs

My Gmail experience –

I’ve been using Gmail from very nearly the beginning, and have gotten so used to it, that I don’t always think about why I like it, and why it works so well for me. Part of it has to do with a level of comfort with the interface and tools, of course, but I think there is more to it than that. One of the things that I really like is the way Gmail files email as conversations, as opposed to a bunch of discrete pieces of email. With my daughters, I have email conversations that range up to about 50 pieces of email, and they’re all automatically kept filed together.
One other thing I like very much is that the search facility is a standard Google search within the email itself. Since I don’t even have to think about the process of formulating a search, it’s easier to find what I’m looking for, and there is no time spent building indexes or opening another search interface, it’s just all right there. The last strength is that my mobile connects directly and happily to Gmail, so that I have fairly constant access to my email account. Not a vital selling point, but a nice one.

jjs