Thing 14: E-Books

I got my fiancee a Kindle last Christmas and we really enjoy it. E-Books are great but not everybody likes to read long texts on a backlit screen. It seems like E-Book readers are going to be quite popular for the next few years, we'll see if it's just a fad or not.

For this activity I searched for the book Fight Club. I did not expect to find it for free because it's relatively new. A few of the databases had the book, but I could only see a few pages. I know, though, that if I had searched for a book like Plato's Republic I would have found many copies available in full text.

At least having all of these free ebooks is a perfect excuse to catch up on reading the classics.

A Thing Worth Mentioning: Jing!

I was looking over the 23 things list and decided to add something to it. There is a piece of software called Jing that has been essential during my time at the reference desk. Jing simply allows you to take screenshots and make videos. It is most useful when doing chat reference. Here's an example of how one might use Jing to easily explain how to find an online resource:

-The patron asks "Where can I find an electronic biography of Gandhi?"
- Here's the Jing screencast I made: http://screencast.com/t/odGMdFM66eK

This is so much easier than trying to explain how to do it through chatting. The patron doesn't need to have any prior experience to see what I'm doing in the video. It's less than a minute long and it allows us to take the patron through the process of searching, instead of just giving them the answer.

Jing is also useful for taking screenshots because you can manipulate the size of the capture box. So if you want to take a screenshot of just a small object on your screen you can do so. Here's the logo from UW libraries webpage:

Best of all, Jing is free! This is a resource that any library can take advantage of. I can't imagine doing chat reference without it!