Week 4

E Books

            In his June 26, 2010 NYT article, Steven Johnson defended the growing adoption of electronic

readers. He states: “We are marginally less focused, and exponentially more connected. That's a bargain all of us should be happy to make”  In her 2010 white paper for the ACLS, Nina Geilen points out that “Scholarly content generally involves extensive networking and cross-referencing between individual works through various channels, including bibliographically citation and subsequent analysis and discussion.” Geilen's statement leads me to think that the networking and connectivity needs of the scholarly users of handheld readers is in some ways different from the needs of the social and business users. Some additional tools and features are needed by the scholarly user.

             Most of the respondents in Geilen's assessment of scholarly E-books were satisfied with the hardware and interactive features such as adding notes, bookmarks and highlights. However, some of the needs of the scholarly user were not meet satisfactorily. Many expressed frustration with the search function. The inability to access and search across a large number of titles was seen as a problem. Difficulty was noted with citing and referencing. Gielen concluded “...the convenience of portability and access to permanent downloads (perceived as a boon for the casual reader) did not outweigh the limits of functionality when it came to scholarly reading.” I agree with Galein that advancing technology can overcome the current challenges to the use of handheld readers for scholarly applications. The growth in the availability of scholarly E-books as noted in the January 12, 2011 edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education and the introduction of new technology such as the Android-compatible Nook Color bring scholars ever closer to the happy bargain touted by Johnson.

Cloud computing

My experience with cloud computing is still somewhat limited.  I enjoy Audible Books. I have used cloud back-up and storage for personal use. My understanding is that security and privacy standards for the cloud are a work-in-progress and that there is a history of security breaches.  Being a rather dull and private person, I just don’t store anything that I would worry much about others accessing. I would think twice about using the cloud for sensitive or confidential material.

I recently began using another aspect of cloud computing. Overall, I found the experience with Google docs positive. It seems very useful to share and collaborate on documents. There are some drawbacks for me. The frequent automatic saves don’t suit my working style.  I like being able to do the code manipulation that I can manage in the Corel products. I understand that I would need to know Python to do any code manipulation in Google docs. I also have some security concerns for confidential work. The cost is certainly a plus. I can see why Google docs is so popular.