Legal Research

iPads, Kindles, and Academic Libraries

By admin

It’s been interesting to watch academic libraries and their reactions to some of the newer ebook readers.

Some univerisities have reportedly attempted to partially ban them on campus and then pulled back when more information was shared or avoided a little bad PR. (here , here and spun here)

Some have done some good early stage research on whether these readers are ready for primetime. One study was about the Kindle in higher education. You can read more here:

Kindle Failed Tests at Several Colleges. Will iPads Do Better?

The Reed College Kindle Study

It’s early days and thesde are small initial studies. No one is saying that this stuff can’t work. It just requires a little work to figure out where the devices are an improvement rather than just another option.

I like this approach by North Carolina State University which took hte play and incubator approach to just scope student and research reactions to the iPad. Check out the comments.

iPad Test Drive

“NCSU Libraries has long been a technology incubator for the university, helping tech-savvy NC State students with budgets based around Ramen Noodles to have free access to the latest computing platforms, ebooks and multimedia gear. This week, we put Apple?s newest product ? the iPad ? in the hands of five bloggers who agreed to put the red-hot gadgets through the paces as our students head to classes, go out on the town or generally goof around the Web ? all while sharing their thoughts with NCSU.EDU readers.”

That’s a good approach. It doesn’t need deep testing yet. Let’s play for a while to scope the opportunities and see the elasticity of our users for new technology.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on May 10, 2010 (boomark / email).