Preparing for annual leave

This is "me"

Catching up on everything today. Trying to make it all shipshape before a have a little time off, which is why this blog is a little late going out.

Just as a parting shot before I go I thought I would leave you with this post from Scott’s eLearning Library. I think you should read Scott’s article (if you haven’t already) and his links to Karl Drinkwater’s post and SCONUL article. There’s plenty out there now telling us about how badly the traditional publishing services are doing but the academic world in the UK still seems to be trying to manage with paper based books. Please, please let me know if anyone knows if this isn’t true. Even our ebooks tend not to be produced on standard ebook platforms! This is a technology that is here to stay, I used to read quite a lot of paper-based books but since I downloaded Kindle to my iPad I have read far more books. As Scott says, with a leather cover on my iPad it is just like reading a good book – and I don’t get the eye-strain I used to either.

I’m not saying we should do away with books completely. I love old books – I love them because they were works of art, the covers are beautiful, the typeset is beautiful – let’s keep them as works of art, encourage people to create books from hand-made paper, and gold-leaf the lettering on the spine. Books and eReaders should be used for different purposes. I don’t know anyone who would rather lug round a great pile of books rather than an iPad. If lecturers could do their marking on an iPad instead of having to print everything off because the screens on laptops and desktops are so awful I’m sure they would choose to do so. And just think of all that re-shelving ebooks could save

I’m away until 18th July so just keep talking between yourselves until I get back