Exercise One
Find and report on your blog the three booksellers that are closest to your branch or facility. Do they have an online presence? If they do, please describe it in twenty-five words or less on your blog.
B. Dalton Booksellers- BookStop on Alabama, Borders on Alabama at Kirby and Brazos Bookstore on Bissonnet. B Dalton turned out to be Barnes and Noble website. Borders quick search didn't work but I did find a paperback of Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio by using the advanced search. Brazos Bookstore had an interesting website giving staff and customers reading picks along with store suggestions. They listed upcoming events. I was able to find books about Houston I had not seen before.
Exercise Two
Search for one of the books you selected in the previous post. Is it available from a bookstore? Which one, and at what price? (In dollars or in other books.) Can you find an eBook or Audio version online? On which site did your find it? (If you can’t find it online, please list in your blog the sites you searched.)
Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio was available from Borders in mass market paperback for $7.99 The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost by Brad Strickland was currently out of stock in Barnes and Nobel but I could pick up 19 used copies for as little as $1.99. Borders did not have it listed. I checked Amazon for online or audio and found neither for Grinning Ghost. The Greg Bear book, Darwin's Radio was available to read on a Kindle for $6.64 from Amazon. Audio CD was listed for $88.67 also a downloadable copy was available through "Audible" for $13.13.
Exercise Three
Download an eBook. Spend at least half an hour reading it. Write about your experience on your blog. How did it compare with reading a traditional print copy? What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of each format?
This exercise required me to browse some of the free ebooks online websites in order to find a book I wanted to read. Barleby.com had the Harvard Classics. I first chose a Robert Burns poetry book but found it was hard to tell if I was looking at a book or just summoning up a poem from the Internet. Then I clicked on the link mentioned called 20+ Places for Public Domain Ebooks . This was very helpful because it not only listed the URLs for public domain ebooks but gave a brief description to guide me. PlanetPDF was listed as having " a decent sized collection of classic novels all in PDF format". I browsed the titles until I found "Emma" by Jane Austen. After increasing the font I found I could read it easily on the computer screen. One advantage for using an ebook would be if all the library copies are checked out and student needs to read it for an assignment. It's cheaper than purchasing from a book store. Disadvantages are that you must have Internet access and a computer in order to read. Not everyone has this equipment at their house. When reading a book online you can't really see how far you've gone. I enjoy seeing if I am a third through or halfway by looking at where the bookmark falls in the book. Reading a paperback in the backyard or at the beach does not work with an online book. I enjoy reading on the plane or while waiting in airport and doctor offices. Paperbacks fit easily in my purse and I don't need Internet access or a laptop.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment