Exercise 1: The three nearest bookstores to zip code 77571 are Barnes and Noble at Beltway 8 in Pasadena; Top Shelf Text Books on Spencer Highway; and the Dusty Cover on Spencer Highway. Barnes and Noble's page links from the corporate home page. It has basic information: address, phone number and hours. Top Shelf Text Books does not have a home page but by typing in its name in Google you can find address, phone number and customer reviews of the store. The Dusty Cover also has no home page but location, hours and phone number are easily available with a Google search.
Exercise 2: I searched for David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. Most bookstores do not have searchable databases so I usually check amazon.com. They had used copies starting at $0.97. Shipping is normally only a few dollars and you can almost always beat any other price buying this way. I did find an audio book online in the HCPL Digital Media Catalog.
Exercise 3: I was unable to download an e-book in our library workroom. Instead, I checked out Project Gutenberg for its selections. It definitely seems to lean toward the classical and more esoteric titles rather than more popular and current titles. Reading the text of "Ancient poems, ballads and songs of England" was interesting but not as enjoyable to me as holding a book in my hand. The advantages of a print copy are: accessibility (do not need to own electronic products to read it); aesthetic -- for a bibliophile who prefers the smell and texture of pages; and ease of use -- requires reading skills but no technical skills. The advantages of an electronic copy are that the work is preserved in a form that will outlast paper; it transcends geographic location so that you can access it anywhere; and it appeals to a generation that looks to technology for communication delivery.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment