If you borrowed and returned a library iPad in November and signed into your iCloud account using an account that starts with the letter “a” and end with @gmail.com, PLEASE contact the circulation desk so we can unlock this iPad and return it to the circulating pool! Contact dfrostma@middlebury.edu, call x5494, or stop by the circulation desk. Thanks!
Tag Archives: iPad
In case you ever wondered what it costs to charge your iPad…
Some have asked, “Is it really cost effective for me to be reading documents on an iPad with a back-lit screen instead of printing them out?”. Based on this article, it is worth literally every penny.
For $1.36 for a year, when charging an iPad every other day, you can read a lot of papers! That amount of money would print 27.2 single sided sheets at the current printing costs on campus. Food for thought, don’t you think?
The study was only done using iPads but it would be safe to assume that the savings are similar with other tablets.
iPads are now available at the Circulation Desk
LIS is pleased to announce that iPads are now available at the Circulation Desk of the Davis Family Library. They will circulate to faculty and staff for two weeks. A list of pre-installed apps can be viewed here. Stop by and check one out today!
iPads are ready to circulate
Circulation now has four iPads for your borrowing pleasure. Until we get all of the workflow wrinkles ironed out, we are going to try to keep circulation internal (LIS staff only). So stop by and check one out (which is so blatant as to not even qualify as a pun, intended or not).
Upgrade to FirstClass Server
For many years, the Bread Loaf School of English has been using a mail/conferencing system called FirstClass. FirstClass was one of the first ‘bulletin boards’ to develop a graphic user interface and the BLSE has used this technology for mail, course conferences, support of the Bread Loaf Teachers Network and general discussion conferences. Until last May, the server running the FirstClass server software was located on campus and supported by the Enterprise and Network Solutions group.
Last May, LIS decided to outsource the administration and support of this server to WhatIf Networks, a company based in Westbrook, ME that has years of experience supporting FirstClass servers. The cut over of services took place just before the beginning of the 2010 BLSE summer sessions. At the conclusion of the summer classes, we began planning to upgrade the server to a newer version of the software, from version 8.0 to version 9.1. One of the driving factors in this decision was the increasing number of requests of the BreadNet community to access their mail and conferences from smart phones (particularly iPhones) and iPads. Our upgrade now makes this possible and we have a number of happy smart phone users.
However, to prepare for the upgrade, it was necessary to reconfigure the roughly 1000 user desktops so that the upgraded client view was clean and uncluttered. Caroline Eisner, the director of Breadnet; Margaret ‘Mugs’ Johnson of WhatIf Networks and Shel Sax worked over the weekend reconfiguring the user desktops in preparation for the upgrade. The upgrade was effected late Saturday afternoon, November 20th and the new software installed without incident
After the upgrade, a typical FirstClass client desktop looks like this:
iPad for Academics
Louisa Burnham (History), Joe Antonioli (LIS) and Shel Sax (CTLR) shared their experiences with the iPad Wednesday afternoon during a brown-bag lunch presentation and discussion in Lib 105. They focused mostly on teaching and research, but questions from a very-interested audience reflected both academic and extra-curricular interests (where do YOU go for recipes?).
Here’s what Louisa, Joe and Shel told us about the iPad:
Louisa Burnham (History)
Louisa purchased her iPad mostly for travel during the summer, but she continues to use it now. She has been pleased overall, but she still needs a regular computer, eg to prepare a manuscript. During her presentation, Louisa highlighted the 2 apps below, but she has found many other useful research apps (dictionaries, ebook readers, etc.).
iAnnotate PDF
- Annotation of articles, grading of papers.
- Circle, highlight, write with finger or stylus, type into a post-it style box.
- For grading – students can email the paper, and when she’s done annotating she can email it back.
- Louisa also uses Dropbox, a cloud-based app (there’s also an iPad app). Put a Dropbox folder on your computer, and the contents will be synced with your Dropbox folder/s elsewhere. FYI, Dropbox folders can be shared among users.
- Louisa uses a wifi connection only (didn’t pay for 3G access).
- Purchased bluetooth keyboard but has found that touch keyboard is usable.
DocsToGo
- Import, view, edit, create: .doc, .docx, .ppt, PDF, etc.
- Can’t edit or create footnotes. Still, better than Pages (Mac word processing program, which strips footnotes and diacritics altogether).
- Also just started using 2Screens for presentations. It allows live on-screen annotation
Joe Antonioli (LIS)
Some reasons why Joe likes the iPad:
- iPad turns on and off quickly.
- Can connect to Exchange, Google calendar.
Joe’s favs include: Stargazer, Flipboard (displays web pages differently, eg as a book).
Next iPad will have a camera
Shel Sax (CTLR)
Fav Apps: forscore (scans and displays music), eclicker.
Additional Notes
Students and others on campus will use devices other than the iPad/iPod/iPhone. For example Android, Blackberry. We should be thinking about all mobile devices.
The iPad is a new and emerging technology and currently, LIS and other College budgets are unable to support institutional purchases of iPads.
Question: Which format would Louisa prefer for a book (eg a novel), print or ebook? Answer: Print.
Note for projection in classrooms: It’s app-specific (ie, some apps will project and others will not).
How to find apps: Google, NITLE, iTunes store.
To Come
Another presentation in a few months? Sure.
iPad user group? Sure.
