My Kindle at College - background

I'm probably setting a record, and from what I can find on the net, doing something new. I bought a Kindle and got it on Wednesday January 27th (2010) and have yet to buy a kindle book for it! A suggestion from someone at school got me started with writing this blog and I swore I'd never have a blog. But here goes!

As a student with a disability, I try to limit the weight of items in my backpack. I discovered the hard way that if you have too many books in your backpack, it can A) hurt your back. B) cause your wheelchair to flip. C) gets annoying. With some help from my trusty scanner, and some of the textbook publishers, I'm trying something different.

I have bought some books, cut out each page and scanned them into my computer. I then make a PDF document and carry around just the pages I need. I have the "whole" book as a PDF document on my thumb drive and on my computer at home. This worked well until a professor gave the wrong page, wanted to skip around in the book mid-class, etc.

Some publishers have provided a PDF to the school for my use. I must buy a copy of the book as part of the licensing. But it gives me a high quality PDF document and takes zero time on my part. I again print parts of the book and have the full book at home as well as my thumb drive.

Some of my books are "literature" and I can find them at Project Gutenberg or The Archive and I can download them from there. The downfall to this is when the professor says "turn to page....." and I go "ummm". But it's searchable on my computer when I write papers and need to find a quote. And these I can print in an easy to read font/size.

I've even found many literature books as free audio books. My classmates are envious, but I share with them. (free online resources cost a dozen cookies or some brownies).

When a professor kills a tree printing multiple handouts, I end up scanning these into PDF documents so I can do my research and reading anywhere without carrying them around.

This semester looked to be the first semester where all my books are PDF documents or word documents. I had to scan two books by hand, the rest were free literature or PDF documents from the publishers. But how to carry and read them easily?

I took the plunge and ordered the Kindle (the DX - big screen model). It got LOTS of attention in class on Friday! And I'm still trying to get used to it.

I've figured out how to take "word" documents and format them for pages, table of contents and put them on the Kindle. Copying the PDF documents over was a snap. There is only one text book not yet on my Kindle. I bought the paper copy, and it has a Kindle format at Amazon. So I'll probably buy that soon. I don't actually need to read it just yet for class.

I'm not sure this is an idea or option that every student will use, will want to use. But maybe posting my ideas and experiences will help someone else decide if they want to go this route. I found articles about Kindles in education (article 1) (article 2). So maybe they're not ready for it campus wide, but what about you as an individual? (disability optional!)

If we pressure textbook publishers, electronic textbooks may become reasonably priced and easily transportable.