What I like

Reading is amazing on the iPad. I liked reading on my iPhone but I missed being able to see a page at a time. The iBooks app is pretty nice – it comes with Winnie the Pooh (hey! Look! Color!) and there’s a bunch of free books you can download. But the Kindle app is also great and I already have quite a few books from the Kindle store.  I’m not sure which will wind up being the more popular of the two.

Safari works pretty well. I can’t say it’s the best browsing experience I’ve ever had, but it’s a good one. Google Reader mobile interface works well for catching up on my RSS feeds. I still need to test how well it works for library research resources but I haven’t seen too many issues in the ones I’ve tested so far.

I’m really enjoying the apps.  Apps that were good on the iPhone are better on the iPad.  The New York Times app looks amazing.  Evernote was useful for managing notes with the iPhone and is even easier to use on the iPad.  Dragon Dictation for iPad has a multiple note feature now.

I’ve also downloaded a few sketching apps.  Adobe’s free Adobe Ideas is great for mapping out quick ideas and sending them to other people.  ArtStudio ($.99)  is a good basic drawing program that even has a few photo-editing features.  I also like SketchBook ($7.99), a more advanced studio program that includes dozens of adjustable brushes.

Other fun apps include Marvel Comics (free, read comics a page at a time or panel-by-panel; it’s like a virtual Scott McCloud experiment, you’ll have to pay for individual issues), Epicurious (free, featuring detailed information about each recipe including reviews and nutritional info), and Desktop ($12.99, connect directly to your PC or Mac desktop or laptop).

Needs improvement

Pretty much all of the issues I’ve seen have been well-covered already.  I was a little surprised to learn that my 2 year old Mac’s USB ports weren’t very good at charging the iPad, but that’s not a big problem.  I don’t think I’ve encountered the problems with wireless others have reported.  I could do without all of the thumbprints on the screen, but same goes for my iPhone.  And while it’s easier to type on the iPad than I had expected, I keep typing “n” when I want to hit the space bar, which is annoying.  As for whether it’s supposedly “not legible in the sun,” I live in Chicago so who knows when I’ll get to test that.

There are a few things I’m disappointed about.  First, the apps are a little more expensive than I thought they would be.  Apps on the iPhone were generally about $.99, but many iPad apps are priced around $9.99.  Moreover, a few of the apps I have work equally well on the iPhone or the iPad, but not many of them. It’s one thing to install new iPad versions of the free apps, but I’m reluctant to buy new versions of apps I already have on my iPhone.  So far, I’ve only paid for 2 iPad upgrade apps – Photogene for its additional editing options, and Scrabble (what can I say, I really like Scrabble).

Second, I’m finding I miss Flash more than I expected.  The iPhone’s screen is small enough so that I expect there to be some limitations and so I don’t get as frustrated when I come across them.  On the iPad however, I expect a more full browsing experience.  For example, I’d like to be able to edit my Google Docs.

Most disappointing is how the iPad doesn’t look like it will be a great presentation device, at least not at first.  It seems that only certain programs will work with the iPad-to-VGA connector, and I don’t think Safari is one of those programs.  So I might be able to do a few great Keynote presentations, but I can’t also show a website or a drawing.

So will the iPad be useful for law schools?  Sure, to a certain extent.  It’s great for reading.  It’s terrific for one-on-one presentations (“Let me show you this”).   It’s even a good device for informal note taking (or more intense note taking if you get an external keyboard).  But it needs to have more presentation options if it’s going to be useful in the classroom.

I’ve only been playing with my iPad a few days (and my 4-year-old “borrowed” it most of Sunday in any case) and still have a lot to explore.  I want to better test its presentation capabilities and play more with video.  I also plan to see how well it handles certain kinds of documents.  But that’s stuff for future reviews.  For right now, I’m off to play with my new iPad.

Are there other tablet alternatives out there? Sure. This Touch Book, for example, is less expensive and comes with Linux. You can modify it to do pretty much anything. If I had a project where I needed a tablet that could be modified, I’d totally get it.

But what I want is a device that works right out of the box.  That works with my other platforms (like my laptop and iPhone).  So instead of the Touch Book, I’m getting the iPad.  As for how I plan to use it:

• A cheaper Wacom tablet.  I’ve used the standard tablet & stylus, but I found it hard to draw so indirectly.  I always wanted a Wacom Cintiq which lets users draw directly on a screen, but even low-end versions are $999.  The iPad isn’t as precise, but I expect it to work well enough.
• An e-book reader.  The Kindle iPhone app is great for light reading, but for professional texts, I’d rather see the entire page.
• Media viewer.  Yes, I know it can’t handle Flash.  But it can handle streaming Netflix videos, which is a pretty good compromise.
• Presentation device.  Actually, I’m not too sure how well the iPad will work as a presentation device, but if the logistics could be worked out, it would be great to give presentations using a small tablet rather than being tethered to a laptop and a podium.
• Stuff I have no idea about, not yet at least.  A lot of people have touted the iPad is just a giant iPod Touch.  Maybe so, but the operating word here is “giant.”  It wasn’t clear exactly how useful the iPod/iPod Touch would be until the app store opened up, and suddenly there were all kinds of possibilities, from games to note taking to information tracking to photo editing.  Those devices, however, are constrained by their screen size.  A larger screen size will offer that many more possibilities.

Already, we’re starting to see some of these ideas emerge, particularly ones featuring the iPad as a shared device, one that might be passed around while individuals work on their personal devices such as iPhones.  The best example I’ve seen so far is Scrabble for the iPad.  The iPad acts as a game board but the players can use their iPhones as tile racks.  OK, so this is kind of similar to the Nintendo DS, but maybe the iPad could be used to show a client a document as an attorney revises it on a laptop. Or several designers connect to a single iPad to create a mock up website. The iPad should be a great platform to take these concepts out of gaming to another level.

More reviews about the iPad.

The person posting the update needed an article. The rules said they had to pay $31.50 for an article. This didn’t pass the sanity check ["$30 for one article from a journal, that's crazy!"] and the librarian was grousing. They’re also grousing to a huge network of librarians, many of whom had free [or, paid for by their institution] access to the same content.

To paraphrase Jessamyn, should the librarian solve the problem or follow the rules?  Should the librarian take a copy of the article from one of their online friends, or should they pay for the article?  And yes, they were able to get the article, but only by using resources that aren’t available to most library users.

This problem should seem familiar to us – it is similar to one of the major issues we law libraries face constantly.  We have a ton of primary and secondary legal information at our disposal.  Some of that information is available for free on the web, but most is not, and the free stuff can be hard to use.  If we keep that information locked up, we are preventing users – both pro ses and attorneys – from accessing information they need to navigate the legal system.  If we allow unauthorized access to our content, we violate our vendor contracts and open up our institutions/ organizations/ firms to law suits.

This is one of the classic dilemmas of information ethics. And I don’t have an answer, or even a recommendation.  I believe law librarians should serve our community, but I also understand the need to be compliant with our license agreements.  My inner pragmatist knows that there are often work arounds to any individual problem – many online resources allow articles to be shared for personal/scholarly use or even be ILLed, for example.  But this still leaves many others in our community without full access to legal materials.  What is our ethical obligation to them?

On Vendor Swag

The Ethical Librarian

Shorter version: In launching Westlaw Next, West provided free trips to some librarians to preview the product and gave others free iPod Nanos.  Some of these perks were accepted, while others were rejected.  Sarah wrote about the ethical implications of these gifts, and found that our professional organizations do not offer much help to law librarians with ethics questions.

For many of us, ethics weren’t stressed in library school.  We may have been taught some basics, such as protecting patron confidentiality, but other issues were addressed only tangentially (if at all), including what should our relationship with vendors be.  Some library schools offer ethics classes, but when I last checked a few years ago, they weren’t universally offered and certainly weren’t universally mandatory.

As a profession, I think sometimes we librarians perceive ourselves as not having a lot of power, not like elected officials, for example.  Our actions, in most cases, are likely to only have a minor effect on how others relate to the vendors we work with.  But as Sarah pointed out:

I [] don’t feel comfortable being a billboard for the legal information duopoly in front of my students who expect me to speak freely about the pluses and negatives of each service, so I don’t accept the little gifts of pens, coffee mugs, note pads, etc.

We can’t know always what effect our actions will have.

Moreover, to continue to be considered as professionals, we have to maintain a standard of ethics.  Without creating and adhering to ethical guidelines, we deprofessionalize ourselves.  Rightly or wrongly, many feel that librarians are becoming superfluous – anyone can search Google, huh?  So we need to show that we offer more than just searching skills, and part of that package we present includes a set of ethical values which assures that our patrons will receive the excellent services and resources.

What next?  We should continue to talk more about the kinds of ethical issues we face, particularly those that go beyond pens and Nanos.  Who our our patrons – those in our organization, or should we include our entire community?  What quality of information do we owe our users?  How does ethical manager or leader behave?  What do “information ethics” mean in law librarianship?

And we need to get our organizations involved.  Is it time to update AALL’s ethical principles? Should SLA create its own?  Are there other resources we should develop that would help those who have ethics questions?

Sarah’s posts are a great start of what I hope is a long, productive discussion.

Full disclosure: I have an office full of vendor pens.  And some pads of paper.  Also USB sticks.  Maybe a mouse or a calculator here or there.

Social Knowledge Management- where is knowledge management going?

The Geeks are right. KM as we know it is dead. And the sooner we all realise that, the better.

The key problem of traditional KM tools is a human one: When something becomes obvious, people tend to stop sharing. It becomes implanted in their subconscious as background thinking and they cease to write it down.

Tools that connect people with experts are more effective, according to the article.  Blogs and wikis have a place for providing news or documenting procedures, but expert connections seem to be more valuable.

We’ve been thinking about ways to connect our law schools technical experts together.  This article has some good ideas.  I think I’ll work on a mind map for a bit to see where this might go.

William & Mary Campus Maps – get PDF, Google Earth, Open Street Map, and ArcGIS versions of campus maps.  That’s some serious maps.

SnagIt for Mac (Beta) – I use SnagIt to capture screenshots just about every day.  I’m psyched about the Mac version!

Bricks & Bytes 2010 – I hadn’t really paid attention to what was going on with this conference this year, but the agenda looks really interesting.  Also, the conference will take place in 3 different schools over 3 days, letting attendees compare how each handles classroom and law school technology.

Local Books iPhone App – find local libraries and bookstores with your iPhone.  Our library wasn’t in the directory, so I added it.