Amazon Kindle: Academic Review

The Amazon Kindle ($259, approx. £160) is delivered in their trademark brown box like any other order. But unlike a second hand book or a budget price DVD, there is something a bit more unique and exciting inside.

Billed as the most important thing to happen to reading since movable type, The Journal wanted to find out what all the fuss was about, and—more importantly—whether this could save us some library trips.

As an academic tool, the Kindle seems to have limitless potential. Imagine never waiting embarrassed by the printer while your 50-page Studies on Voltaire article prints, and receiving in seconds emergency book purchases when that one reading they assigned to a class of 25 isn't in the library's reserve. And since the Kindle Store is in US dollars, most e-book purchases are very cheap for UK students.

But in reality, the Kindle Store's “over 400,000 books” are surprisingly limited.

That doesn't just mean you won't find a copy of that oh-so-popular Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, but even some recently published and popular novels by such names as Salman Rushdie cannot be found.

There are limited science textbooks, and the black and white display precludes the use of many. This is partly alleviated by the fact that one can access tens of thousands of classic (and past copyright) works for free on sites such as Project Gutenberg, which can then be added directly to the Kindle. This is, of course, of limited use outside of certain subject areas.

Much more promising is the experience of PDFs. Much university reading across disciplines comes in the form of journal articles, and a quick email or a USB transfer can get all of your PDFs onto the Kindle.

The ability to highlight and annotate the text is by far the most useful academic feature. The PDF utility is worth the cost of entry alone.

Any student who has struggled with the eye strain of reading long articles on a computer will appreciate the e-ink display, which we found to be crisp and very 'paper-like'.

In a device 1/3 of an inch thick and weighing in at just over ten ounces, the ability to store thousands of articles is a blessing to those who have wasted vast amounts of paper printing articles out.

Unfortunately, the awkward keyboard made the otherwise useful annotation feature very frustrating.

It is worth noting that this device is not going to replace the stacks in the library any time soon. Copyright and distribution inhibits the ability of universities to buy mass licenses for book titles, and most books, even for a popular course such as English Literature, are still unavailable in electronic form.

We took multiple English Literature honours course reading lists, and found only a smattering of the assigned readings available for the Kindle.

History and Politics were more or less out of the question, and there are currently very few foreign language works.

The potential is there: with all of the benefits of reading on real paper, and all of the added technological benefits including built in dictionary look-up, the Kindle makes a strong case for the student's purchase.

However, the current lack of titles available and a few quirks such as the keyboard mean that as far as academics go, the main benefit is a centralized and more comfortable PDF library. It is, perhaps, still best used as an entertainment device.