Do you own or use an e-reader?  Mann Library is looking at e-reader devices and their use for scholarly research.  We're interested in hearing about your experiences!  We're specifically interested in the following information:

  • Which e-reader do you own or use?
  • Ease of use (e.g. handling, battery life, etc)?
  • Reading experience (eyestrain, font size, format)?
  • Usefulness for research (annotation, bookmarking or highlighting features and their ease of use)?
  • Content selection and loading (from the designated bookstore or other means)? Have you've tried to load scholarly publications or Cornell owned or licensed content onto the device?
  • Other features besides e-books?
  • Any other information or comments

Right now we're looking at the following e-readers and mobile devices, iPad, iTouch, Kindles, Nook, and Sony readers, but feel free to leave comments about other readers and devices if you have them.

Please leave your comments at the bottom (just log in with your netID and password in the top righthand corner, click the Add Comment link at the very bottom of the page, type in your comments and Post). You're also welcome to email us at ca92@cornell.edu or jp243@cornell.edu or give us a call. We would appreciate any feedback by July 16th.

For more information, see our draft page on e-readers at https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/mannltc/E-readers.

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1 Comment

  1. Mary Beth Martini-Lyons

    I own an iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone and have at least the Kindle app installed on all devices.  I also have iBooks installed on the iPad.  I have found reading books on the iPhone and Touch to not be the greatest experience.  In a pinch, I can do it, but reading books on the iPad is an entirely different experience.  The iPad is very easy to use, has treamendous battery life and the reading experience is quite satisfying.  I have a preference for reading books in the iBooks app rather than the Kindle app based on the available features - I like the dictionary feature in iBooks so I can easily look up a word, iBooks also has a highlighting option and a nice search function within the book.  I also like that way iBooks treats progress in the book - it goes by pages whereas the Kindle app shows you the percentage of the book you've read.  Both apps offer bookmarking, but only iBooks offers the ability to annotate and it's easy to use.  The Kindle app has a very large selection of content, iBooks less so, but I believe the selection is growing.  Nice additional features on the iPad: ability to use the CUL app, ability to use a browser to access content, ability to access video and audio files.  I had no trouble quickly accessing a 2008 article from The Psychological Record using ProQuest via the CUL website.  Additionally the iPad's color display would offer a great advantage if the text you were reading included photos, graphs or charts.