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.)