Researching the Social.. Or Socializing the Research

Trying to research on a social platform instead of using traditional resources has been a bit of a strange difference for me. It makes researching quite a bit more fun when it's on a social platform rather than mindlessly flipping through volume 43 of 105 of the complete works of who knows what to find a paragraph with some statistic to put into a boring paper that no one but my professor will ever read.

So naturally to start of my research I went to Twitter. Because I have a strong belief that Twitter has the answers to all.

I tried to focus first on Goodreads, Amazon, and book reviews. And there's so much information and people talking about these things! So many people are so interested in why reviews matter, and how they further books along. I also found a lot of discussions from authors talking about these saying that reviews are one of the most important parts of their books as they're what move people to read their books. I also poked around by searching for the terms digilit and digiliteracy. I thought I was being super clever when I came up with that term, but it's actually something that is really picking up speed and has apparently been around for a while. There's digiliteracy groups out there and their goals are to get iPads to students to further reading, or pushing for different and new reading apps and groups online. There's forums about reviving old classics in the new digital age and the way that digital is actually helping out libraries. There's SO much out there already, and I'm interested to see what else there is!


I then took to Facebook asking about why people think online book reviews matter. I hope for more feedback, but I did get a SUPER good response from an author that I know. I was so grateful for her response and she brought up some good points on why reviews matter to authors as well as the readers and how different people can use them. I'm very excited for her opinions as an author as well as a friend.

I still have some work to do, and there's still so much more to find on these topics. I'm actually very surprised by how popular these topics are!

Social Network Fueled Research

We use social networks everyday.  Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. have become integral parts of our day-to-day lives.  When doing research we have unlimited access to so much information via search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.  But, we might be leaving out an important component when we exclusively turn to academic sources to give us the information that we seek.  Social resources can offer a wonderful insight, which is why our class is engaging in doing such research for our e-book project.  For our e-book project, we are focusing on platforms such as the Kindle, Amazon, and Goodreads and related components and how they are influencing our reading habits in daily life and education.

Dr. Burton created a bibliography Google Doc for us to use.  He helpfully laid out several social topics for us to look at and start researching in.  He told our class today that next to Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine.  That really sparked my thought because I YouTube quite a lot of things.  I often turn to YouTube for help in explaining difficult school topics, audio books, and fun, entertainment-related things.  It only makes sense that we would use YouTube videos to obtain background and topic information for our e-book project.

I didn't have as much time to do research as I would've liked before I had to submit this post, but what I did find was promising.  I found several videos in which YouTube users compare print books and e-books, which is something that is super important and relavent to our topic.  Click here if you would like to see some of the search results that I found regarding e-book vs. print book.

I also found some videos on YouTube that will be particularly applicable to one of my chapters.  My first chapter has a heavy focus on Goodreads, an Amazon sister company.  Goodreads is a social networking site for readers, and it allows for readers to interact on many levels with books at the center of everything.  A simple search entry of "Goodreads" on YouTube resulted in many different users who related their feelings about the Goodreads site.  I haven't had time to look at it very much, but I plan on doing so before our next class on Wednesday morning.

The Social Research Resources

I love that our class is taking a new approach to research.  To help along the progress of our eBook project, we have looked at a few different sources in order to find more information to put in our chapters.  As an English major, I thought that this class would require a lot of hours in the library, pouring over giant books with even bigger words that were impossible to understand, just to figure out the hidden meaning of a classic paragraph.

Well, I'm still spending hours in the library.

However, this research is much different than what I thought it would be!  Instead of sticking to the traditional forms of learning, we have been encouraged to check out social sources.  This is basically my favorite activity, because I think that communicating over the internet is super cool.  To find out more about the great innovation of the Amazon Kindle and Goodreads.com, I checked out a few sites that I visit every day, but with a very different purpose!

For example, I headed over to Pinterest to see if there was any discussion or info over there,  While they had a lot of great stuff on teaching how to be digitally aware, safe, productive, etc., I didn't find much about our topic in particular.  However, Twitter turned out to be really useful with its hashtag searches.  There were a couple good articles that I found there about using Kindles in the classroom and how they have affected education.  Facebook was not the best option for me.  I don't think that many people see it as a place for literary discussion quite as much as other forums, etc.  Obviously that's based on my own connections, but I think that the majority of people who are interested in our topic are found on other forums, etc.

So...I went to forums!  I just typed in "Forums about Kindle" into Google and was taken to a ton of sites.  Amazon has one right on their page, but I think that one was pretty biased and they took any negative stuff off.  This obviously makes sense from a business perspective, but isn't the most accurate source.  The other site that I found here had a lot of topics and opinions.  It was cool!

As far as scholarly sources, I could use some help.  I found a few on the HBLL site, but nothing very specific as to what we're trying to write about.  If anyone finds some, let me know by commenting or just putting them on the drive!

Formatting for Freedom from Frustrations - (almost) Phew!

For the first step in publishing our class eBook, I was tasked with the job of putting the eBook onto each class member's Kindle so that we could determine any issues to be resolved. For this step, I used Calibre, an eBook managing system. It was incredibly frustrating because this was my first time, but I was finally able to gather a basic knowledge of the program to produce a draft of the eBook. The next step will be to add more chapters into a second draft of the book. For the Design Editor, Lauren Sullivan, I have written some of the steps I discovered as I created the first draft.

Lauren, I tried my best to make sure this is clear, but you'll probably still need to figure a lot out on your own.

Before inputting the document into Calibre
Each chapter in Word or Google Docs:
Title - 18 pt font, centered, bold
Image - centered, about same size
Content - justified, 12 pt font (one space between paragraphs is fine, but make sure there aren't any tabs between); headings: underlined, 14 pt font, centered
Black font, Times New Roman
I sent everyone their chapters on the Google drive so everyone should be able to shape their new chapters based on the formatting there.
Lauren, you'll want to copy and paste each chapter into one document so that you can load that one document into Calibre.

Actually putting the eBook together:
Open Calibre
Click "Add books" in top left corner
Select Word Document (whatever you've titled the book)
1. Once it's download into Calibre, right click and select "Edit Metadata" then "Edit Metadata Individually"
- To Change Cover, select Browse and upload picture from your computer
- Change authors and titles at top
-Select OK when finished

2. It'll take you back to your Calibre Library
- right click again on the book and select "Convert Books" > "Convert Individually"
- it'll open a new window. In top right corner, change output format to EPUB
- on left side select "Table of Contents" - click box that says "Manually fine-tune the ToC after conversion is completed
- on left side select "Structure Detection" - change "chapter mark" to both
- click okay and it will convert and apply the changes you selected

3. Back at the library, right click on the book and select "edit book"
- On the left side, it will say "Text" and under it there is a link that says "index.html" - double click on index and the book will show
- Once the book is open, go to the bottom right side and select the paper airplane looking thing. This will enable you to break up the chapters so you don't have to keep scrolling down to edit separate chapters.
- When you hit the paper airplane looking thing, you move your mouse over the book and you'll see a green line. Click where you want the page to be broken up (typically, right before the beginning of a new chapter). Go through the whole document doing this and you'll see on the left side there are now more "index" links. Each time you have to select the paper airplane thing.
-just go through each one to make sure that the formatting is all the same. It should be if you've got everything the correct way in the word document

4. Here's where it gets complicated..But maybe you can figure it out!
-I feel like I've tried everything to get the chapters to start on their own page, but I can't figure it out
-I also feel like I've tried everything to get the Table of Contents to show up..but here's how to do the Table of Contents so you can try and see if you can figure it out:

--First thing you need to do is go to each "index" or chapter you've just broken it up and make each of the titles h1. To do this highlight the html text of each chapter title.  Click the symbol that shows this "<>" and select h1. It will bold each one and change it up a little bit. It will look like this for each one:
<h1><p id="id_GoBack" class="chapter">Introduction: Imperial Amazon and the Rewilding of Literary Study</p></h1>

-- Next go to Tools>edit Table of Contents and select "generate ToC from major headings". Click okay. Then go to Tools>Table of Contents and select the in line option.

That's about as far as I got with the eBook. Make sure to click save, then exit the editing window. Right click on the book and select "Connect/Share". Email to selected recipients and just put everyone's Kindle email in there. I sent a copy to my Kindle a few times before I sent to everyone to make sure it looked okay. Good luck!

Becoming Digiliterate: Working Table of Contents

Per our class discussion this morning, below is a working table of contents for round two of our eBook. I didn't put each potential chapter in any particular order. I just kind of threw everything together so we could get an idea of what might be missing. Things are finally taking real shape - the excitement is getting real!

Introduction: Dr. Burton – Heart of Darkness – Imperial Amazon

Introducing the Platforms:

Emily Larsen: To Kill A Mockingbird – kindle as a device, features, dedicated eRead devices as opposed to tablets and iPhones

Saren Bennett: Harry Potter – feeling comfortable on the online platforms, Goodreads, new world but cozy up

To Be Determined (TBD): Introductory chapter for Amazon

<Mini-Intro>

Part 1: Find

Lauren Sullivan: The Giver – long tail, reviving interest, access (self-published, niche), genres, search, amazon > cultural memory

Meghan Derrick: Ella Enchanted – eLending, limited availability of titles, how that’s changing, rights, buying based on popularity, storage issues

Emily Larsen: To Kill A Mockingbird – sampling, modern browsing, too much to read and not enough time, large to read shelves or amazon wish lists

Dr. Burton: Fahrenheit 451 – danger of not being willing to move from printed to electronic format

TBD (Lauren?): Commercial aspects of Amazon and Goodreads – literary/visual attractiveness

TBD: Reviews on both platforms as a way of finding

Part 2: Read

Leah Smartt: Pride and Prejudice – reconsumption, classic lit, classic comeback, bridge film and lit, secondary education audience, teachers

Lauren Sullivan: The Giver – isolation, reading and buying online, physically isolated, no need to leave your home to buy something, no goodreads interaction on Kindle

TBD (Meghan?): Change in reading practices, we read differently on the Kindle than online

Nathan Scovill: Slaughterhouse Five – nonlinear consumption, spoiler alerts, consumption of story out of order

Jenna Rasmussen: Cinderella – x ray feature, study through features rather than cheating through SparkNotes

Shelby Dana: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – credible sources, learning via Kindle

Part 3: Connect

Meghan Derrick: Day in the Life – privacy on Goodreads and Amazon, no need to be as worried as some are – what to be concerned about, “Big Brother”

Saren Bennett: Goose Girl – reviews on Amazon vs Goodreads, differences, purposes

Nathan Scovill: Watchmen – moving from solitary to social activity through Goodreads

TBD: Perhaps we need one or two more chapters in this section. Maybe we can brainstorm other ways that we connect on these sites? For example, we can connect with our favorite authors now. Emily had something going about this for a little while.

Part 4: Create

Leah Smartt: Pride and Prejudice – digital libraries: kindle (unlimited) vs. traditional libraries, becoming a librarian on Goodreads, curating bookshelves

Jenna Rasmussen: Cinderella – Self-publishing through Amazon and Goodreads, moving away from Cinderella complex, (possibly discuss how we created the eBook…)

Shelby Dana: Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – downloading illegally, piracy, property rights, creating security in one’s work

TBD (Jenna?):  how the class created the eBook

TBD: Maybe we need a chapter about creating online friendships?

<Conclusion>

Works Cited, Acknowledgements, Image Credits

Diverse Strategies for Literary Research: A Guide

As we work together as a team on our Digiliterary ebook project, we are going to need to research in traditional scholarship, finding the most authoritative and the most current sources. We should also make use of social sources, an increasingly important methodology that too few students and scholars recognize as a legitimate research strategy.

This post is intended to give some guidance in finding traditional scholarship, current scholarship, and social sources. What I am not discussing here is the important topic of search terms. That deserves its own post. Assuming, then, that one has at least some good starting points for topics and search terms, here are three ways into good sources:

Adding Chapters Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

So I'm a little bit late in posting. In fact, I'm posting from class. Hello!
I've been a little bit swamped this week, with a test and a research paper proposal filling up my schedule yesterday.

With that in mind, I'm looking to have my second chapter cover a book other than Slaughterhouse Five. Namely, the graphic novel called Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. It's in the Time Magazine's top 100 novels of all time, so you know it's good.

BOOK PART
How we read, probably.

CHAPTER TITLE

"It's Us. Only Us": The Movement of Reading from a Solitary Hobby to a Social Activity

TWEETHIS

In the past, reading has been a largely solitary hobby for many people. With the advent of sites like Goodreads, reading can now connect a reader to others around the world.

KEYWORDS

Watchmen, Social Networking, Goodreads, Amazon, Connection

TOPICAL IMAGE

CONTENT PARAMETERS

DIGILITERARY VIA AMAZON-KINDLE-GOODREADS CONNECTION

Goodreads social networking capabilities.

LITERARY WORK

Watchmen

TRADITIONAL REFERENCES - (General Literary, Scholarly)

Hughes, Jamie "Who Watches the Watchmen: Ideology and 'Real World' Superheroes"

(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5931.2006.00278.x/abstract)

SOCIAL REFERENCES (current conversations, social media, interviews)

Watchmen Goodreads review page.

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/472331.Watchmen

CONTENT LAYOUT

I think that in all that we're talking about, we've somewhat glanced over the movement of reading from being something that is more of a solitary activity to one that is becoming inherently social, especially through the medium of Goodreads.