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The Kindle for Law Schools Small Tool, Big Idea. Lyonette Louis-Jacques Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law D'Angelo Law Library CALI Conference for Law School Computing: "Tools for Change" June 19, 2009 http://w.cali.org/conference/session/64.
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The Kindle for Law SchoolsSmall Tool, Big Idea Lyonette Louis-Jacques Foreign and International Law Librarian and Lecturer in Law D'Angelo Law Library CALI Conference for Law School Computing: "Tools for Change" June 19, 2009 http://w.cali.org/conference/session/64
One Kindle to Rule Them All • The Amazon Kindle • The Kindle 2 • The Kindle DX • The Kindle for iPhone App
Convenience • The Kindle is small • The Kindle is light • The Kindle is long-lasting • The Kindle is capacious • The Kindle is wireless
Content • The Kindle 2 holds 1500 books • The Kindle Store has over 300,000 books, magazines, newspapers, blogs • You can load your own content onto the Kindle 2, but… • The Kindle 2 has a text-to-speech feature, but…
Connecting with the Kindle • You can search for content • You can find definitions of terms • You can annotate and highlight texts • You can jump to the web • You can play music on the Kindle • You can change font sizes • The Kindle can read to you
Some Kindle Disconnects • The Kindle is expensive • The Kindle 2 breaks up PDFs, slow page turns • The Kindle is bland and colorless (and you can’t read it in the dark) – but see iPhone app • The Kindle is fragile • The Kindle’s text-to-speech flawed, not for all books • The Kindle only handles non-DRM uploads • Kindle content is not “device agnostic” • The Kindle is U.S. only, for now • Questions re lending, gifting content
Concept: A Portable Library • The Kindle could replace heavy casebooks • You could load working papers, court opinions, statutes, and other documents on the Kindle • The Kindle can contain recreational reading materials, and course packets, conference papers • You could load legal MP3s, Audible audiobooks. • You can annotate and highlight texts and read them at Amazon.com • You can browse books and link out to referenced text
Concept Applied • 531 U.S. (CALI Kindle version) • Professor David Currie reading the U.S. Constitution (MP3) • Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (PDF) • Results of informal survey on Twitter, teknoids, and the CSSIS-L lists on Kindle ownership and use • Kindle stories, testimonials: “I love my Kindle!”
Obstacles • The Kindle Store has very few casebooks, hornbooks and nutshells, law reviews (major legal publishers not adding content) • The Kindle Store does not have Black’s Law Dictionary • The Kindle Store has very few primary legal materials • The Kindle 2 does not handle PDFs well (odd word breaks) • The Kindle 2 does not really do pagination • The Kindle 2 does not link out from texts to web
Conclusion • The Kindle = Small Tool • The Kindle = Big Idea for Change • The Kindle = “The Big Potential”, The Kindle Wave? • Is the Kindle Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, or Kwame Brown?