Electonic Book Readers and One City-One Book: inspiring MEANINGFUL conversations

Electonic Book Readers


My feedback after reading the document Electronic Book Readers:
The reading provided me with a good basic overview of the history of these devices, I didn't realize how long they had been around.  I love that it uses less power while also being easier on the eye: one of the many wonders of this new technology. The way I think of the "lag" in refresh time is that I don't friggin care! It is a great new technology with the crazy little balls and I would not complain if one of these were to fall into my lap this Christmas. Unfortunately, I am forever poor and so is my family and I don't see me or my husband actively using one of these unless they were more like 30$ a pop. But that is just us, what I once thought was a stupid waste of money, after the reading that we were assigned and the wonderful presentation, I find incredibly cool and worthwhile. I will be watching this new technology with anticipation of a cheaper or free option for someone like me. The article provided a lot of information to think about, both for personal use and for this new devices use in public libraries. It gave me, as a beginner in this new digital world, good insight into the different types of e-books and technologies and what may come in the future. It was well written and, most importantly for our purposes, very well presented.

Presentation of materials and ideas:

So, the electronic book reader...well, I might never be at a point in my life where I feel that I need or even want one, but the presentation given by my classmates, at least in part, made me want to see other people use them. They don't seem so frivolous when I think about how much they may help people who have issues, physically reading a book. Although it is also covered in the article, our classmate did a really good job of explaining how people with disabilities might utilize the electronic voice reading options. I thought that this was the part of the group presentation which made me wake up and really get into the idea of uses for these new devices.

Oh, and by the way, E-ink is incredibly cool and I am so thankful that Justine provided us with insight into how this all works and how it is different from the normal backlit devices that I am used to (or getting used to).
The group spent sufficient time talking about DRM, which of course I had no idea about until doing this reading. The DVD player-breaking analogy was very useful for those like me. Hell, even a "last VCR on the planet" analogy would have worked for me.

One City-One Book: inspiring MEANINGFUL conversations

My thoughts on the readings:

Inspiring great and meaningful conversations in any city is hard to do, especially with the choice of one book per year. Through a public library system in one city, trying to promote one book alone is a hard choice and almost certainly has to echo the diversity of that particular city. I feel that this is a great way to engage people since many people who do have the time to read for pleasure, might come into a library and thing, "so many choices." If there is an option to read a book that is being promoted, has been properly reviewed by people who know "good books," this serves as a great option for those who only have time to dig into one book (like those of us who are in classes for years and years).

It's interesting that the ALA provides a CD for purchase called one book,one community resource guide with poster templates and all of that included for libraries prepared to do a program.
It's nice that the ALA is so involved on the one hand, but I also find it kind of disheartening that publishers and writers may be kissing up to libraries to get their names and titles on one of ALA's booklists for community reads. That reminds me a bit of the ALA's first published selection books for libraries which ignored many controversial and important books. But, still I like the fact that libraries are trying to bring people together to discuss and get excited about reading books again.

Presentation of materials and idea:

The group who presented did a fantastic job in capturing most of the positive and negative arguments for these types of programs. I really liked the fact that they included the idea that this is not just an expansion of the "book club" idea but instead, it is meant to engage all branches of a city's library system, as well as cultural organizations, and bookstores. I really thought that the flyer of the presentation was an excellent idea as well, as it helped to solidify the main points and give us something to contemplate after the presentation.