My experiences using e-book/audio book platforms and subscription services

I took some time over the summer to experiment and explore a number of online e-book and audio subscription services. In addition, at the time I began my exploration, an article emailed to me from my network entitled "What’s better than Kindle Unlimited for $120 a year? This free alternative" (see Randall, 2014) also inspired me to think more about my experiment. The result is this preliminary report on my experiences using three e-book/audio book platforms or subscription services: Reading Rainbow, OverDrive and Audible. The limitation, I have only attempted to use these platforms on one device, the iPad.

• Reading Rainbow app for iOS - free version
• OverDrive - free through my public library
• Amazon's Audible - 30-day trial version

I begin with the Reading Rainbow App downloaded from the App Store. Reading Rainbow was a television program when I was a kid, and now that I am a parent with girls that like to read, I decided to check out this app. Rather than being an app that talk about books and featured children performing reading, the app was essentially a "Library of Children's Books, Kids Videos & Educational Games" (See the i-Tunes review). After the long introductory video, the app visually organizes books by islands of interest (located in the sky) with interesting titles such as "the Animal Kingdom", "Genius Academy" and "Action Adventure & Magical Tales". The child can then navigate to an island of interest and access books and educational videos in that genre or topical island. In addition, the readers in the free version can check out up to five e-books into their virtual backpack. The reading experience is not only one where narration is provided, but to some extent, limited interactivity is built into the picture books, where readers can touch the page and experience certain (motion and sound) effects.

While Reading Rainbow was a hit with my first born who wanted me to subscribe so that she could access more books and return the books she had already read, I could not bring myself to do so, knowing that I had a free public library 15 minutes away from where I lived. Yet, considering that we had limited time to spend at the library each week borrowing books and that my first born devoured the books borrowed within 2 days, it seemed that access to e-books would perhaps be a better option for such a voracious reader. This brings me to the free library alternative, OverDrive.

In 2012, I blogged about my first experience using OverDrive (See that blog post here). However, at that time, I used OverDrive, I did so using the laptop. This time however, I used OverDrive with the iPad, and I must say, OverDrive is better used with iPad than a laptop. Just the portability alone and the fact that you can curl up into a chair without something warm or hot (especially in the summer) in your lap makes the iPad or tablet computer a better option for reading e-books or listening to audio books versus the laptop.

That said, to get started, you have to download the app and get your library card in hand. (Setting-up can be quite a daunting process compared to Reading Rainbow's app). Once you are set up and learn your way around the app and the library's website, you are good to go. OverDrive is definitely not as intuitive and easy as ReadingRainbow, where you can just navigate to islands of interest. Rather, navigation here requires browsing images of book covers or tapping on hyperlinks organized by genre. However, the plus side is that you can search for what you want (whereas Reading Rainbow forces you to just explore what they have available). While OverDrive was great for downloading both e-books and audio books, I do not think it sparked the enthusiasm of my firstborn as much as Reading Rainbow. Nonetheless, my firstborn enjoyed listening to the audio books and hopefully learned some new words and how they are pronounced or sound, compared to just reading the text by herself.

Another thing about OverDrive is that the collection is limited. For one reason or the other, the selection of books was particularly limiting for my peculiar interest in Judeo-Christian theology. I found few books (7 from four authors) discussing Jesus. On the other hand, I could not access the Word of Promise audio Bible that I had previously borrowed in CD-form from the same public library and had to settle for a less dramatic King James version. As such, I conclude that OverDrive perhaps may not be a platform to go for a specific hobby-related interest, but more what is the popular interest. Another down side to this, is that you only get 14 days to listen to or read the books borrowed. In addition, some books that you may be interested in may have to be placed on hold as someone else is currently reading or using the file. So you might have a queue waiting for an e-book or audio book to become available.


That brings me to Audible. Audible requires setting up an account with Amazon or signing into your existing account with Amazon. That said, I was offered a 30 day trial version of the service, enabling me to download the app and experience it. It is from this app that I was able to access the Word of Promise audio Bible, which I downloaded and was able to listen to even without Internet Access. The strange thing about this was that my CD player and radio died 2 days after I downloaded the app (must have been jealous).

Compared to OverDrive, Audible seemingly offers a greater variety of books for one's peculiar hobby-related interest. Further, you do not have to wait in a queue for a popular book. You can essentially get any book that you want for either a monthly or annual fee. Randal (2014) mentions that Kindle Unlimited charges $9.99 a month, but the fee for subscription to Audible is 14.95 per month. With this price, I will just stick it out at OverDrive and perhaps just buy the e-book that I really want that the library does not provide access to.


Now listening to audio books is like listening to the radio. When I was a child, there used to be radio dramas. And listening to audio books, (especially fictional ones) or those that employ dramaturgical or theatrical elements, reminded me of those days when I'd listen to radio dramas. Yet, I am a more visual person, and eventually tune out audio as background noise (apart from the interesting fiction books like the ones my firstborn were listening to). Further, I can only listen to one book at a time and could not fathom downloading a new audio book daily, weekly or monthly. What this means is that I would have to download books that I'd want to hear for a year, and then listen to each book until it is completed, before going on to the next book. As such, I don't think paying $14.95 per month is justified for listening to audio books, just the same way that I am unaccustomed for paying to listen to radio stations with their annoying ads.

That said, I end my report on my experiences here. Up next (in the future) is my report on the experience using Google Play as a platform for accessing e-books.

Reference:

Randall, T. (2014, July 31). What’s better than Kindle Unlimited for $120 a year? This free alternative. Bloomberg Retrieved from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-31/what-s-better-than-kindle-unlimited-for-120-a-year-this-free-alternative.html

Mobile apps coexisting with the printed book?

I had the opportunity this summer to explore mobile apps on the iPad. In addition to experimenting with the tablet and mostly free mobile apps, I also completed my online course on "the future of storytelling". In this course, one of the final segments was on transmedia storytelling, which mentioned how the narrative of a traditionally published novel was extended through the use of mobile apps. Through this particular segment, I learned about MirrorWorld and Mirada. In this blog post or entry, I briefly introduce both MirrorWorld and Mirada, with some discussion of how these represent a new trend of convergence between traditional book publishing and mobile app development.

To begin, MirrorWorld is one of the works of Mirada in modern storytelling that mixes both traditional and technological techniques to expand on a story world first told by a novel. According to Mirada's About page,  Mirada is "a studio designed for storytellers" (Mirada 2014, "About"). They specialise in "synthesizing archetypal oral tradition with modern technique" (Mirada 2014, "About", para. 2). Mirada further dubs Mirror World as the "World’s First Living Storybook" (Mirada 2014, "Cornelia"). In my understanding of Mirror World, Mirada built a mobile app that functioned as a story engine or database that permits users to explore the story world and be immersed into an interactive experience while exploring the story. For more information on this (or if you want to check out the app for yourself), explore the following websites:

• http://mirrorworldnovels.com/
• http://www.corneliafunke.com/index.php?page=app&lang=en

However, I just wanted to opine here that after seeing Mirror World and learning about the development of the app to expand on the novel, I think the future of traditional book publishing will persist. Hence, future books being published will have accompanying apps. These accompanying apps will expand the story world of the traditionally published book visually and otherwise. What this means in my opinion is that the printed book is not yet dead, but will co-exist in the future with apps that expands upon the narrative that the book tells.


References:

Mirada (2014). About. Retrieved from http://mirada.com/about

---(2014). Cornelia Funke’s mirror world: Crafting the World’s First Living Storybook.
Retrieved from http://mirada.com/stories/mirrorworld

Notebooks as information sources for academic libraries?

This week I stumbled upon a link to an academic conference showcasing: scholarship on note taking and note writing entitled Duly Noted: The Past, Present and Future of Note-Taking. I appreciated reading the blurb for the conference as it did provide a case that studying note taking and writing notes are important as writing does play a role in oral processes and oral communication in our modern or post modern world.

According to the blurb posted by Stockman (2012), note taking scholarship involves the study of the activity of "jotting down of things people say". To study this, researchers analyze the artifacts or objects of  note books or written notes.This area is perhaps difficult to study, as notes are meant to be ephemeral, and those surviving do so because their disposal was neglected by their creators and eventually found their way into libraries and other institutions that took steps to careful preserve them.


Another area of study in note taking scholarship is the annotation of books. This involves the study of the notes that people make in published books. Based on the blurb, it seems that one of the data source which one could use to observe note taking is academia, especially college students, who both take notes based on lectures as well as may annotate their text books. Stockman (2012) does point out that this practice is not only a feature of modern times, but indicate that note taking has been a practice seemingly as old as the history of writing.  Torah and Talmud scholars have engaged in note taking practice and textual commentary, as well as ancient scholars noted stuff on clay tablets and parchment.

Why should we care?

It is easy to note that not all persons write notes that are legible and that not all notes are useful. However, libraries have always had the knack for sorting through the universe of information and selecting very useful resources and information that are relevant to meeting the information needs of their present and even future communities.

Notes are in fact ephemeral information sources, usually done for the purpose of reminding or preserving something for memory. It is clear that today, people engage in digital note taking and that even some blogs and Twitter may function as that for some persons like myself. I note stuff to retrieve it later for future use when it becomes relevant to do so. However, even noting stuff in a public media reveals that a person believes that his or her personal notes can have some public value, beyond private use, study and purposes. This brings me to the issue of libraries and how they should view or treat notes and note books and even annotated textbooks.

Position 1: Libraries should collect notes and notebooks. Especially university libraries. And especially student notes from a course. And even notes from faculty. 

This is based on the assumption that students who have completed a course would be interested in sharing their notes or donating their notebooks to some repository to help other students. I can remember from my own university days, that students voluntarily passed on their notebooks and course materials to other students pursuing the course that they already completed.

Another assumption I have made is that university students would seek out course material from previous years and want to access such material to get a sense of what a course is like and what may be covered. Again there is no guarantee that the notes taken from a previous year will be covered in the present, but it may still be useful to the students.

Most importantly, faculty would be the greatest beneficiaries of such note taking preservation strategies, as faculty would be able to view what students noted and compare with their own notes. In addition, new and old faculty could both benefit, by reviewing what was covered in a previous course.


Position 2: Libraries should have at least one copy of an undergraduate textbook to be dubbed the annotated copy.
 
While libraries prefer users not to annotate their resources, they should in my opinion reserve and permit at least one resource (out of mutliple copies) to be annotated by students with pen or pencil. The rationale for this is kind of weird, born both out of personal experience and experience with the current Web 2.0 trends.

In a weird way, I believe that students like to see what others who have read the book before have to say about it and especially specific points. I myself enjoy looking at what others thought about an idea expressed by the author. I have read books annotated by others that have commented on which points expressed by the author was weak or strong. In addition I have read  a book where a student annotated unfamiliar words to a more familiar words so that one would not have to reach for the dictionary to look them up. As such, the practice I believe is a useful one for students who read the book after, depending on quality of the annotation.


In addition, Biblical scholars also annotate and intersperse the Bible with commentaries and notes. In the online world, this practice is resurrected, with many persons commenting on books read and other media and publishing those comments for other to see. It is therefore in my opinion, human and natural for persons to annotate and comment on ideas in books, and have an interest in what others found interesting, important or useful in a book. This permits conversation.

However, the problems with this is that, like the online world of practical jokers (or trolls) and the offline world of bathroom graffiti artists, we will have some useless and poor quality annotations. Quality control would be an issue, but I do not think that this has to be a limitation that prevents libraries from even experimenting with this practice.


Source:

Stockman, Sebastian.  (2012, November 9). Duly noted: The past, present, and future of note-taking.  The Altantic Retrieved from: http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/duly-noted-the-past-present-and-future-of-note-taking/264533/