Thing Sixteen: E-Books

I think the addition of PsycBooks to our e-book collection is really a terrific resource for our psychology students. When I provide orientations to the library I always emphasize that we have access to thousands of e-books through NetLibray, Safari Books, the Gale Reference Center,etc.

I think that e-books are definitely the wave of the future, with libraries increasing the size of their online book collections and adding fewer print titles. However, not all of the students I've worked with are interested in using e-books at this time. When I help students search on the online catalog, many prefer to look at just the print books which they can check out and have no interest in looking at the e-books.

I have to admit that my own preference is still reading a traditional book on paper. As the article on e-books from Educause points out, "For those who enjoy lying on a sofa reading a novel, e-books can seem anathema to reading for pleasure." If I want to read Emma or A Tale of Two Cities, I'm going to get a paper copy. It's nice that these works are available for free on Project Gutenberg, but that's not how I want to read them. I find reading books online to be somewhat cumbersome, having to click on Next or an arrow to go from one page to another.

I am constantly buying books on Amazon.com, and while I currently don't have a Kindle, I will probably purchase one in the near future just because I'm literally running out of room for any more print books! I've talked to a number of people who have purchased Amazon's Kindle, and they all tell me how much they enjoy using it.

Thing Fifteen: Creative Commons

I think it would definitely be worthwhile to include information about Creative Commons licensing in library instruction. The resources made available through Creative Commons are especially valuable for education, and faculty could make use of many of the materials. I was impressed by the open courseware available from a number of universities, and also by the photos and images, sound, and videos available under different licenses from Creative Commons. I decided to do a search for "Golden Gate Bridge," and in addition to numerous photos, I found a video dealing with the construction of the bridge and another video of it's opening in 1936. Creative Commons is a wonderful resource. As one of the presentations we looked at noted, while copyright gives a red light, Creative Commons signals a green light. It complements copyright and places an emphasis on sharing and connection and collaboration.

Thing Eight : Screencasting

I decided to use Jing for my screencast. I've never used Jing before, but I'd heard about it from a number of people. I used Jing to illustrate some searches on EBSCO's Academic Search Complete and to illustrate some features of the database. I didn't add audio to the screencast.(I had Jing installed on my station at the circulation desk, which is not a good location for recording because of all the noise around it). The information I read about Jing indicates that it can be used for short presentations of up to 5 minutes. I plan on making use of it in our library.

Thing 14: Online Surveys