Using e-reader for journals?

busttropical

I don't know if it's just me, but for some reason staring at a bright computer screen and trying to concentrate on journal articles just gives me a headache, no matter how interesting the research is..

Has anyone started using e-readers, such as the Amazon kindle to take the headache out of it? Unfortunately I think I've read that you can't just browse and download pdfs on these things, you may have to save them to your computer, then email them to your special Kindle account to access them on the device. Sounds like a major inconvenience to me

Would like to know people's thoughts

Scruffles

if its firefox being used,there is an addon called firebug which can be used to completely manipulate a website on the user end-everything can be changed including the words but once its refreshed it will go back to normal [have never looked into whether it can be saved or not.]

will need firefox [obviously],firebug:
http://getfirebug.com/
and a list of hex codes for changing the colours:
http://html-color-codes.com/

its a bit complicated but just experiment with it.

The Black Oil

OP, this thread might help. Check out the Gadgets forum as well. Calibre will save you the bother of having to email stuff to amazon, though you'll still have to grab the PDFs from your library/journal site.

Sid_Justice

I have a sony e-reader, it's much better suited to novels then journal articles. It doesn't really handle pdfs that are organised into those two columns very well or the graphs. The larger kindle, the a4 sized one is amazing though.

If you're dealing with lots of journal articles you really should have some managment program in action, calibre as mentioned is good(but bit of a memory hog) at moving stuff onto your reader but not great at organisation. Mendelay is very good at the organisation part, and includes referencing functionality.

Anyone that is writing a Msc or PHd and is messing around with word docs and windows directory full of pdfs are masochistic in my opinion.

Organise your stuff with mendelay, use calibre to transfer it to your reader, use latex/bibtex to reference and organise your thesis or at least use endnote (or what ever is equivalent / better these days)

krd

busttropical wrote: »

I don't know if it's just me, but for some reason staring at a bright computer screen and trying to concentrate on journal articles just gives me a headache, no matter how interesting the research is..

I'll give you a tip that sounds ludicrously obvious.

Turn down the brightness on your monitor. You can adjust the contrast too - eventually you should find a level that's more comfortable. It's just a simple thing to do, you'll notice the difference.

It's not just you.

busttropical

Haha, good advice! There's still something about it that puts me off reading for lengthy periods though!

CivilServant

Try using a program like flux to change the colour temperature of your monitor. I find it great, it reduces the bluey harshness of monitor glare in dim lighting conditions. Your eyes with thank you for it