U. to launch Kindle pilot program

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos ’86 unveiled the new e-reader — which has a larger screen and is slimmer than the original Kindle introduced in November 2007 — during a press conference at Pace University on Wednesday. The company also announced plans to fund classroom trials of the product at Princeton as well as at Pace, Case Western Reserve University, Reed College, Arizona State University and the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Drew Herdener, the company’s director of communications, said in an e-mail that, for the company, the aim of the university partnerships was to “see how useful a wireless reading device can be for students,” adding that “the participating schools are still working out the details of their respective pilots.”

While other universities also announced similar programs, Princeton’s project is unique in that it will focus on sustainability by reducing the amount of electronic-reserve course materials that students print.

“Over 10 million pages were printed out in cluster printers [last year],” OIT director of academic services Serge Goldstein said, adding that “a lot of that is students printing e-reserves.” He emphasized that the other schools partnering with Amazon were more focused on providing students with textbooks on the e-readers rather than reducing paper use on campus.

“These devices have a screen technology that is really designed to optimize the reading experience,” Goldstein said, adding that students print e-reserves rather than read them on their computers because “laptop screens are not designed for supporting lots of reading.”

Housed in a thin, white frame, the Kindle DX offers several improvements over the current version — the Kindle 2 — including a larger display that measures 9.7 inches across and PDF reading capability, which will allow students to read e-reserves scanned by the library. The device can hold up to 3,500 books, and users can download texts from Amazon’s online store via a wireless connection.

The new version will cost $489, compared to $359 for the Kindle 2.

With the devices provided by the pilot program, called “Toward Print-Less and Paper-Less Courses: Pilot Amazon Kindle Program,” students will be able to search and annotate their readings, Goldstein said.

“We are going to be working with the library to scan material in Optical Character Recognition form,” he explained. Because the documents will be in this form, students will be able to annotate them using the Kindle’s keyboard and five-way controller, which acts like a joystick.

“Most of the material will be flowable text,” Goldstein added. “It’s actual electronic text. You can actually search it.”

Still, the e-reader’s annotation capabilities may pose a challenge to students, Goldstein said, explaining, “We think that annotating on paper is easier.” He also noted that paging through paper documents is much quicker than perusing those texts on the Kindle because there is a short delay before the next page can be displayed on the device.

“A whole bunch of things we’ll find to be problematic,” Goldstein said of possible disadvantages of the console. “There are no perfect devices out there yet.”

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

While talks of a pilot program began two years ago, when Amazon first approached the University, the current project didn’t fully materialize until six months ago, when Amazon decided to proceed with the program, Goldstein said, adding that $30,000 of funding for the project will come from the High Meadows Sustainability Fund, which was founded by Carl Ferenbach ’64. Amazon will match the amount donated by the fund.

“We believe we can support about 50 or so students plus the faculty and a few staff who also need the device … about 60 devices in all,” Goldstein said.

Janet Temos, the director of the Educational Technologies Center at OIT, said she expected Amazon would expand its online coursebook offerings.

“I know they’re working on that,” she said. “It’s an unspoken part of the agreement.”

Once the book lists for the three selected courses are finalized, the University will also send a list of texts to Amazon so the company can make the textbooks available for download through the Kindle Store, Goldstein said.

Students who find the Kindle a poor substitute for their course materials will still be permitted to print e-reserve documents.

“We don’t force technology on people because we think it’s cool or bleeding edge,” Temos said. “If it turns out that it’s not working, we’ll abandon it.”

The three courses that will use Kindles next fall will be announced by the end of the month, Goldstein said, adding that the University chose to wait until after course registration closed to make the announcement.

“We didn’t want students signing up for classes just to get a Kindle,” he explained.

History professor Anthony Grafton, who researches the history of books and currently uses a Kindle 2, said he thought the program was “a little premature.”

“[The selection of books] actually available on the Kindle is not very impressive,” he said. “I do think they will need to do some work on what’s available before it’s totally satisfactory.”