Sometimes I Need to Read the Print Version: When the eBook Doesn’t Evoke the Same Reading Experience

Original photo by Buffy Hamilton

Now that I’ve been reading books on the iPad/iPhone for about two years, I’m taking stock of some evolving patterns in my reading preferences.  A few trends I’ve noticed about myself as a reader:

• I enjoy reading books that I would consider as “fluffy” or “light” (while still very gratifying!) fiction on the iPad or iPhone.  Not only do I seem to concentrate better on these types of texts in digital format, but I also seem to read more quickly.
• Nonfiction is a mixed bag for me–initially, I didn’t notice a difference in my reading experiences of nonfiction from print to digital, but in recent months, I have felt a need to read nonfiction in print—the digital form of highlighting and notetaking just doesn’t seem to meet my needs like sticky notes, highlighted passages, and marginalia composed in my own hand.
• Rereads of favorite fiction are definitely more enjoyable for me in print—I would say the sensory experiences I’ve associated with previous readings of a text in print are the primary reason for this preference.

I had not tried reading a book of poetry in digital format until this weekend.   In the midst of a poetry reading binge on Sunday, I finished two and a half books in print format and one in eBook format.   While I enjoyed all of the poetry reads, I quickly realized the experience of reading a collection of poems in the digital format was not gratifying, and in fact, felt quite uncomfortable—it was akin to putting on a cozy, familiar old sweatshirt and discovering it was suddenly scratchy and ill-fitting.  I literally had difficulty concentrating and soaking in the sensory experiences of the poems; the poems almost seemed sterile in eInk.  Now perhaps this is just a personal reading quirk, but the experience left me with these immediate reactions:

1.  I will purchase all future collections of poetry in print (unless I have a desperate midnight craving for a book that I feel compelled to read in the wee hours of the morning)

2.  Do others have preferences for certain genres in print vs. digital formats?  I’m guessing they do.

3.  How and to what extent is the sensory aspect of reading impacted by a print version versus a digital edition?  I know that question has been the subject of some mockery, but I think this is a legitimate and serious question to consider as readers have diverse needs.

4.  What are the implications of these kinds of questions or points for consideration when thinking about print and digital collection development?

What are your experiences as a reader?  Do you have a preference for certain genres in certain formats, or have you noticed your preferences evolving over time?  I realize what I experienced this weekend and the patterns I’ve noticed are not unique or earth-shattering, but the absolute dissonance I felt with my transaction with the poetry text in digital format are prompting me to think a little more critically about these questions.

Nook Program @ The Unquiet Library Update, March 2012

Catching Up

Many of you have been writing or Tweeting for updates on the Nook program we had planned to launch last fall; unfortunately, several factors slowed our launch date for the program, including:

• a lack of clerical help this academic year
• an incredibly busy schedule of instruction (a good problem to have!) in the library; since the teaching and learning focus comes first, we prioritize our energies into that effort first
• significant delays in the communication process with Barnes and Noble in processing our ebook purchase orders

At this time, we own 50 Nook Simple Touches; Nooks 1-35 are designated with our Barnes and Noble Managed Digital Locker program for classroom use, which could include literature circle book study or independent reading selections.  Nooks 36-50 are for circulation to students who return a parental permission form or who would like to use them in the library during a class or lunch visit.  I worked with Dan Boon, my Community Relations Manager at the Alpharetta Barnes and Noble,  to establish groups of Nooks so that it would be easy for B&N to deliver the eBooks we order via purchase order to the appropriate Nook devices.

Challenges with the Digital Managed Locker Program

In terms of the digital managed locker program, there have definitely been some problems that I have experienced as have many of you.

1.  Barnes and Noble has frankly not done a very good job in educating its employees about the Digital Managed Locker program.  As you can imagine, librarians who are trying to inquire and find out more information about the program feel frustrated when they can’t get the answers they need, and the B&N employees also feel frustrated that they may not have been provided the information and training they need to help implement the program with school librarians or classroom teachers in an effective manner.  I know these concerns have been concerned to B&N management from those of us in the trenches as well as from employees, so I’m hopeful they are committed to being more systematic in communicating the information more effectively.  If you are not able to get the answers you need from someone at the first store you visit or call, I recommend contacting a neighboring store or the regional Barnes and Noble manager for your area.

2.  In some store locations, the community relations manager or person designated as the “go to” person for the Digital Managed Locker program is just swamped with multiple responsibilities; consequently, they may have difficulty dealing with the communications from librarians or teachers in a timely manner.  Since there is no electronic/virtual  interface at this time that librarians can access to submit purchase orders and manage eBook (or app) orders, eBook orders can be delayed significantly when there are gaps in communication.  We as librarians and teachers desperately need a virtual interface to manage these orders; email is simply not an efficient means of managing the orders; we as customers need the option of having more control over reassigning texts to different devices if needed.  While I appreciate that B&N is doing a lot of the management for me, I need to be able to have a point of access to do it myself when needed.

Our local store and representative are committed to helping B&N address these concerns; I very much appreciate that Dan has shared my suggestions for improving the communication channels and order management with those who work at a higher level in the company.  In addition, I appreciate that Dan is willing to come out to my school site if I need assistance with devices.

In terms of technical issues, they have been minimal so far.   We have not had any issues connecting to wireless, and the downloading process has been fairly seamless.  We did have one device go bad as we could not unlock it; after not having any success with the 1-800 technical support, our representative Dan was helpful in resolving the issue and actually bringing us a replacement device (a major time saver–thank you!).  We did have one device not receive the appropriate eBooks assigned to that device, but we are working on resolving that issue as we speak.  One other helpful hint:  it took me a while to realize that the power button is on the back of the Nook; thankfully, the covers we bought are designed to stay on and have the Nook symbol on them so that you can press it and power the device off and on without having to remove the cover.

First Steps of Implementation, Spring 2012

We have now started circulating devices to students for free reading (yes, I let them take the devices home—students and parents sign an acceptable use agreement, and we also bought a 2 year warranty), so I hope to have their feedback for you soon.  The initial impressions, though, have been very positive–students really seem to like the “swipe” technology as well as the size of the devices (it fits in their pockets).   One student in particular is absolutely thrilled to have the chance to use a modern eReader—I am not exaggerating when I say he was giddy and glowing when he left the library!  At this time, the free circulation Nook collection (36-50) is purely student driven like our Kindle eBook collection since students submit eBook request forms when they turn in their permission forms).   At this time, the loan period is one week although we hope to extend that in the future.

Our other initial pilot group is Deborah Frost’s 1st period  9th Literature/Composition class.  The majority of the class, boys, chose to read Monster by Walter Dean Myers; the remainder of the class, girls, selected The Secret Life of Bees.  Since many of the students in the class are self-described reluctant readers, we”ll be surveying them regularly about their reading experiences on the Nooks to see if the medium of reading has any impact on their feelings about reading.  The students are excited  (as are we!) to be the first pilot group; I hope to provide some updates in April when they finish their unit of study.

Questions via Email and the Blog

First I want to apologize if you have emailed me in the last month, and I have not answered your email individually.  For the last year or so, I have tried very hard to answer each inquiry individually and in a timely manner.  However, the number of inquiries has come to a tipping point, and I’m just not able to continue answering inquiries personally at this time.    I’m hopeful that either this blog, my Kindle LibGuide, my Nook LibGuide, or my recent chapter in No Shelf Required II edited by Sue Polanka, will give you the answers you’re seeking; you might also want to follow my Scoop.it magazine on eBooks and eReaders.

I’ve received several emails as of late about how we are circulating the eBooks via our OPAC and tracking what students read.   At this time, there is no way to do either–neither Kindle eBooks on a Kindle device nor a Nook book via a Nook device.   I do not assign MARC records to the eBooks for Kindle or Nook although I do catalog the devices; as I’ve written before, I don’t catalog the Kindle or Nook eBooks individually because 1.  you can’t really “circulate” them via your OPAC and 2.  I don’t assign them to the devices in the MARC record because media specialists in my district do not have rights to edit existing MARC records.    If you need to track that kind of data or circulate eBooks electronically, then you will need to look at an eBook platform like Follett eBooks or Overdrive that is designed to function in those ways.

Next Steps

We’ll now provide students post-reading surveys about the Nook reading experience to determine if they are a good fit for our students;  I’ll also be working with Ms. Frost to get her feedback as a classroom teacher.   While I’m still looking for an eBook platform whose licensing agreements are acceptable for my library and learning environment, especially as our district is now ready to implement a bring your own device policy for 2012-2013, I still think there is a place for circulating the devices themselves since so many don’t have one of their own.  I look forward to giving you a new update in a few weeks as I document our journey of learning and exploration of eBook and eReader experiences and options.

Book Tasting Tweaks, Late Winter 2012

Last fall, I blogged about our book tasting I did with Susan Lester and her 10th Honors World Literature/Composition (Media 21 cohort) students; these texts were a springboard into our unit of inquiry on issues in Africa.   We just finished our later winter book tasting last period, and I did a few modifications from fall that I thought teachers and librarians might like.

Book Tasting Tweak 1

For this book tasting, which is our springboard into a unit of inquiry on war and veterans, I created a book tasting LibGuide.    Although we had hard copies of all the books except for two on the menu, I wanted students to have a portal for our book choices and book review tools.

Home – Lester Spring 2012 Book Tasting – LibGuides at Creekview High School via kwout

In the LibGuide, I included widgets for NoveList and NoveList K-8, which we are fortunate to have access to through GALILEO, Georgia’s Virtual Library, so that students could read book reviews for their choices and/or browse suggested “read alikes” or browse additional books by topic if they chose to do so.  I also used the “books from the catalog” feature in LibGuides to create a visual list of books so that students could peek at the covers on our large screen in one of our library commons instructional areas before heading over to the book cart; I love the fact that you can sort your “books from the catalog” by call number with one mouse click!  For the two books that we didn’t have copies of but that we thought students might be interested in reading, I was able to hyperlink to the books in Amazon (although I could have easily pushed them to any other source like LibraryThing reviews or NoveList) so that students could get a preview since “books from the catalog” allows you to add a hyperlink (which is handy when you are creating a list of eBooks from a database like Gale Virtual Reference Library).  Finally, I included a widget for our Destiny OPAC and a LibGuides built-in widget for Google Book search.  This LibGuide page gave students a virtual portal for learning more about a book and reading reviews after browsing the hard copy of the book.

Book Tasting Tweak 2

For this book tasting, I followed the principle of “less is sometimes more” by giving students a blank 3 x 5 index card after we reviewed the LibGuide.  I instructed students to use one side to jot down notes to themselves about the books they were browsing; on the other side, students indicated their top two book choices.

Susan and I collected these at the end of the class, and I used the notecards to quickly and easily compile a roster of students and top choices.  Since we have enough copies of what everyone wanted and enough money left in our budget to purchase the few additional titles we need, I’m able to give every student his/her top choice.

Here were the choices:

• 2 students chose Code Talker:  A Novel about the Navajo Marines of World War Two
• 2 students chose Dear America:  Letters Home from Vietnam
• 1 student chose Faith of My Fathers
• 3 students chose Fallen Angels
• 4 students chose Purple Heart
• 1 student selected House to House (self-selected through browsing/discovery  rather than a selection from the original menu)
• 1 student selected Sunrise Over Fallujah
• 1 student selected The Long Road Home:  A Story of War and Family
• 2 students selected The Things They Carried
• 3 students chose Soldier Boys
• 3 students selected What  Was Asked of Us
• 1 student chose I Am a Soldier, Too:  The Jessica Lynch Story

Next Steps and Reflections

Now we’ll talk to students about how we might group our Fishbowl inquiry groups for March; it looks as though theme, veteran group, or war might be some focal points for group formation.    We’ll also give the groups some options for variations on their approaches to Fishbowl discussions.  Students will use their texts to discover an issue or topic they want to research related to war and/or veterans (which I’ll be blogging more about in a few weeks).  In conclusion, I think we were all happy with the way the book tasting rolled–students had room for choice, discovery, and exploration without any organizational structures that were overly fussy or complicated.  I’m excited to see how the student engage and respond to their texts as we kick off our unit the last week of February!

Book Tasting in the Library

By popular demand, I’d like to flesh out the details of an activity I’ve done in the past that I call “book tasting.”  I’m sure I am not the first to do it, but the term seems to be that appeals to our teens!  Here is how today’s book tasting played out with Susan Lester’s 10th Honors World Literature/Composition students who are also our third cohort of  ”Media 21.”

Susan and I have worked together in past years to develop a collection of book sets (fiction and nonfiction) on issues related to countries and/or regions in Africa including the HIV epidemic, ethnic wars and genocide, famine, environmental issues, women’s rights,  apartheid, and children soldiers.  We’ve expanded the offerings for this fall to include other contemporary titles related to these issues in other regions of the world as well as immigrant rights, poverty, human trafficking, and privacy issues in a post 9/11 world.

We placed the books on carts that were ready for students when they arrived in the library today.  I explained to the students that we were going to use today’s class period and tomorrow’s to “taste” and immerse ourselves in the books by selecting at least five books over the two day period and to take time to read 10-15 minutes for each book.  Students were encouraged not only to select any five books of their choosing from the carts, but we also offered the option of nominating any additional selections they might choose using our OPAC, NoveList, or Amazon as a discovery portals for additional book choices.  Students are using the form below to record choices, notes, and evaluating how “read-worthy” the book might be with 1 being “Ugh, I can’t get into this book” to 5 being, “I could really sink my teeth into this text.”

Students have the option of sampling more than five books if so inclined.  Once they finish their book tasting on Friday and complete their final evaluations, Susan and I will take a look at their forms and group students in literature and inquiry circles in one of the following ways:

• Groups may be formed around a common reading
• Groups may be formed around a common theme or issue.  Groups formed around a common theme or issue may all be reading the same book, or each member could be reading a completely different text but still be unified by the threads of a common theme/issue.  A group could also be doing mixed readings in the sense that half the group is reading one text, and the other half has a different selection.

Once groups are formed, we’ll spend about two weeks immersed in our texts.  I’ll elaborate more in future blog posts, but we’ll be using collaborative reading responses by group, Fishbowl discussions, and individual responses to the texts to scaffold conversations for learning and as the fodder to help students formulate their research topics and inquiry questions for a digital research composition in October (again–more details coming soon on these learning activities, assessments, and objectives).    Our hope is that this learning structure will give students a more organic series of learning experiences that provides them more freedom, ownership, and participation in the unit of study.

Susan and I are excited to restructure the book tasting in this format; in the past, we had a Publisher template I created that looked like a menu, and we actually required students to sample every book from our menu.   We really wanted to open that up this year to allow more choice, and the students seemed much more engaged with the texts they were sampling today.  We can’t wait to see how it evolves tomorrow and to begin our journey of learning with this unit of inquiry!

Wikis and Dialogical Classrooms with Dr. Bob Fecho

I invite you to take time to watch this insightful video with one of my favorite teachers of all time, Dr. Bob Fecho, of the University of Georgia.  The two courses I took with him, READ 8100 Inquiry Based Literacy and READ 8990, a seminar course on reader response/transactional theories of reading, in 2002-2003 were life changing for me professionally and personally.  I’m excited to read his new book, Teaching for the Students: Habits of Heart, Mind, and Practice in the Engaged Classroom!  I find that my roots in Language and Literacy education continue to inform my work as I am dwelling in the questions related to digital composition and reading and how that intersects with my interest in participatory literacy.  If you enjoy this video, then you may also want to consider reading Fecho’s book Writing in the Dialogical Classroom: Students and Teachers Responding to the Texts of Their Lives.