Jane Austen Digital Archives

I'm what Henry Jenkins terms an aca-fan about a select few authors - Jane Austen included. What this means is I'll read her letters to her sister Cassandra, critical editions of her works, and other texts typical of a literature scholar, but I'll also read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Needless to say, I'm often disappointed by what I see, but I always get excited when I hear of anything new and Austen related, so this just makes me happy: Jane Austen Fiction  Manuscripts. Take a moment to peruse this collection of manuscripts that most of us would never have had the opportunity to see if not for the painstaking efforts made by the University of Oxford and King's College London and funding provided by AHRC. 

Conference Call with Student-Journalists

nook (2)

Since my last post about the nook, I have loaded more pdf articles onto it with varying results. A couple of articles displayed correctly, but most had text that "floated" or did not stay in a straight line with the rest of the text. One article displayed text so small that I couldn't read it. The nook has an option to enlarge text, but for whatever reason, it did not work. Essentially, if you can put up with all the quirkiness of floating text and the possibility that you won't even be able to read an article, reading articles on the nook can work. I went on a long road trip and downloaded about seven articles. I was able to read them in the car even though the sun was shining brightly, which I definitely would not have been able to do if I were reading them on my laptop. It also saved A LOT of paper since I didn't have to print them out. All in all, the nook turned out to be an advantage for that particular paper, and I'm sure I'll use it again to read articles when I don't have access to a computer. 

Based on what I read in Amy Cavender's Review of Nook Study, I don't think the software will be particularly useful for me. It seems like the software is specifically designed for etextbooks not for any reading material. It is also not accessible through the nook itself but only on the computer.

Scrivener

I have finally finished the course work for my master's degree in American literature and am beginning work on my thesis. I've already done quite a bit of research and have written a few shorter papers on the same topic. As a result, before I even began this semester I had a couple of folders full of information. They're a bit overwhelming and a bit disorganized, so I haven't looked at these folders in a while.

Last week I came upon Scrivener, and I am very impressed by all of its capabilities. I've gone through the rather lengthy tutorial, and I'm enthusiastic about jumping into all my old research now. The software will allow me to bring together all my research and previous writings so that I can move easily through them. It will help me maintain a handle on the whole project with labels and synopses for each section, it will allow me to move and change items while maintaining snapshots of the original, and it will display outlines and notecards for the entire project section by section.This is just the tip of the iceberg. I downloaded the trial version and plan on creating my project tomorrow.

What makes me nervous is the formatting. The master's thesis has very particular formatting guidelines, so I'm a little nervous about creating all of this in a program that I'm unfamiliar with and that flat out states it is not intended for formatting. While it does have some formatting capabilities, I'm not sure how much control I'll have in that area. Supposedly I'll be able to export the document into Word and format it from there. The thing is, I know Word and all its capabilities. I even attended a workshop on how to use Word specifically for creating this document. If every piece of technology works like it should (cross my fingers), I can have the best of both worlds. If, however, the formatting from Scrivener creates a wierd template effect or destroys the footnotes or the section breaks, I could end up having to redo the project when I get to Word. That's the worst case scenario, of course, but I find it better to hope for the best and prepare for the worst when dealing with new technology.

(Images from Literature and Latte - Scrivener website.)

Twitter for Professional Educators

Prof. Hacker wrote a great article for educators who might be a little wary about tweeting: "How to Start Tweeting and Why." The greatest benefits seem to be networking and professional development.

nook

Apparently I'm not the only one with nook issues. Since I don't have a Kindle or any other reader, I can't really make legitimate complaints about them, but I'm definitely on the same wavelength as the writer of this article: Dedicated E-Readers Will Be Dead in a Year, If Not Sooner. Nevertheless, I'm invested in the nook and determined to make the e-reader work for my needs. As I previously mentioned, one of the key reasons I jumped on board the e-reader train is to store, organize, and peruse my pdf articles. I've viewed only one pdf article on the device thus far, and I'm unimpressed as there were inconsistencies in the text display. There is a possibility that the article itself is the problem, so I plan to store a few more on the nook and compare them. I'm also curious to see if my notes and annotations made in Adobe Acrobat will display and if I'm able to highlight and annotate within the device itself. It seems that Barnes and Noble is trying to address the needs of students as this article about NOOKStudy attests: Barnes & Noble Makes Nook More Student Friendly. Although it is unclear from this article if this software will apply only to e-textbooks or to any document, it still looks like B&N is moving in the right direction. 

New Writer for Examiner.com

I'm the new West Palm Beach Public Library Examiner. I've written a couple of articles thust far, and I really enjoy it. It's given me an excuse to take my kids to the library and get them involved in the MANY activities there. We've visited several local branches, and it seems there is always some new program, activity, or training.

Some interesting tidbits related to this site:

• Computer training programs are offered for free at every local branch
• You can check out ebooks using an ereader or ereading software
• The PBC Library Website is extensive and very well done

nook rant

I have recently purchased a nook from Barnes and Noble. EReaders have been around for quite some time, and I've been looking at them for years, but I've put off purchasing one. None are exactly what I'm looking for. In a moment of weakness, I gave in to B&N's intensive advertising campaign and purchased their eReader. This is the first technological purchase I've made that I've regretted. I realized, after the fact, that what I truly desire in an eReader can only be found in the iPad. I want more than just an ereader for a particular vender, I want a multipurpose and adaptable machine! In addition, this eReader joins the other techie gadgets in my purse - my phone and my iTouch, so now I need a bigger purse just to hold all this junk! Ridiculous. I used to read using an eReader application on my iTouch, which worked fine and still gave me access to my music, videos, and other apps. But obviously the device is too small to read for long periods of time. This is what sparked my perusal of eReaders. When Amazon's Kindle came out, I was hesitant. I liked the size and the new screen, but I didn't like the fact that I could only get Amazon ebooks. Since its original release, that may have changed, but it has been a continual bone of contention for me because Apple has the same policy with music, video, etc. and its DRM keeps me from truly owning my own downloads. It also makes it difficult to fully realize media downloaded from other sources – although at least it’s possible to get media from other sources. Since I didn’t want to deal with these types of restrictions on yet another product, I avoided the Kindle. The nook, however, seemed slightly more promising. There is already a folder created to hold other documents besides the ones downloaded from Barnes and Noble. As a grad student who downloads a lot of articles from databases for research purposes, I saw a lot of possibilities. That is how I justified my purchase. Unfortunately I have been greatly disappointed in this area. What I see as the nook’s greatest weakness as an eReading device is the inability to create additional folders within the “Documents” folder and its lack of a search function. I have ebooks I’ve downloaded from my previous eReader software mixed in with research articles of various subject with no way to organize them. Very frustrating. I am hoping that as software updates are made, B&N will take a hint from some of the discussion posts on their own website and begin making changes to please their customers rather than adding relatively useless and unrelated features such as sudoku and chess.

AskOnline

There hasn't really been much change from last semester to this except that the teachers to whom I normally promote AskOnline have begun to approach me about it. That's a nice change. There are a few new tutors in the lab this semester, so I'm hoping to recruit additional e-tutors for AskOnline. Last semester, we had about 5.

BlackBoard

I haven't had much need for this program since I teach mostly college prep courses that, in my humble opinion, should not be taught completely online. However, I am a TA for an instructor at FAU and found that it can be useful for students as an additional resource. I've had a few "beginner" issues such as completely loading a class only to find out that it was Fall 2009 rather than Spring 2010 (oops), but despite a few mishaps, it's been pretty easy. At this point, I'm only using it as a place to post course information and additional readings, but there is a possibility that we may use the discussion board later in the semester.