Introducing Amazon Kindle
When Amazon debuted the Kindle Wireless Reading Device in 2007, I was skeptical. In my mind, there are few things as wonderful as curling up with a good book. I simply couldn’t imagine an electronic device taking the place of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare or, for that matter, Appleman on Insurance. I also wondered whether Kindle was merely the latest gadget for the avid fiction reader as opposed to a workable reading device for scholarly material. All of my concerns evaporated in August when I became the proud owner of a Kindle. In the space of six weeks, I went from Kindle-skeptic to Kindle-enthusiast. Entire chapters of Appleman are now loaded onto my Kindle along with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare and 19 other books. In this article, I’ll highlight a few of the many advantages of reading scholarly material on a Kindle and point out some of the disadvantages as well (and how I cope with those disadvantages).
Kindle Advantages:
1. Texts are keyword-searchable on Kindle. Imagine you are looking for a discussion of the case involving a rogue barrel of flour which crashed through a warehouse window and onto an unsuspecting pedestrian, but you don’t remember the name of the case or the book where you read about it. Just hit the search button and enter a keyword or key phrase such as “barrel of flour” or “res ipsa loquitur”. If those phrases appear in any of the texts or documents on your Kindle, Kindle will find them for you.
2. You can search the Internet on Kindle. Neither “barrel of flour” nor “res ipsa” appeared in any of my Kindle books, so I asked my Kindle to search Wikipedia for “res ipsa loquitur” and found that the doctrine was first put forward by Baron Pollack in Byrne v. Boadle, 159 Eng. Rep. 299 (1863), the famous barrel-of-flour-through-the-window case.
3. Kindle has a built-in dictionary. If you need to look up an unfamiliar term in the text you’re reading, simply place the cursor on the line of text containing the term and select “Lookup”. Kindle will then look up the word and provide both the definition and the source of the definition. Kindle defaults to searching the New Oxford American Dictionary. If the word is so obscure that Kindle cannot find it in a dictionary, Kindle will search the Internet for your term, so you can get a contextual feel for the word’s meaning.
4. You can annotate your Kindle texts and documents. To highlight text, place the cursor at the start of the text to be marked and select “highlight”. Follow the text with the cursor until you reach the end of the passage to be marked and press the cursor button. A box will appear around the passage. To add notes, place the cursor where you want the note to appear and select “Add Note”. Make your note and press “done” when you are finished. A note icon will appear in the text to indicate that you’ve made a note.
In my opinion, the greatest advantage of reading scholarly material on Kindle (apart from Kindle’s portability) is the fact that Kindle automatically stores all highlighted passages and all annotations in a searchable, editable file called “My Clippings”. On a Kindle, I don’t have to flip through stacks of documents and texts looking for a particular marginal notation. I need only search My Clippings to find my note.
5. Kindle is a mobile device designed for portability. Kindle is remarkably portable. I currently have an entire bookcase-worth of legal materials and literary works packed in something smaller than most pocketbooks, weighing less than 10.5 ounces. I can read popular fiction, search Shakespeare for a great quote with which to begin an essay, consult legal treatises while analyzing complex conflict of law problems, listen to Seamus Heaney reading his excellent translation of Beowulf (Kindle is audio-file compatible) and look at photographs of my family (Kindle is also jpeg, gif and png compatible) all while taking an airplane or train to an out-of-state conference.
6. Books and other documents can be much less expensive in electronic format. I have noticed that many books are less expensive in Kindle format than in print. This is especially true for works that have passed into the public domain (all of Shakespeare for less than $5).
7. A wide array of documents can be uploaded onto Kindle. My rule of thumb is: if you can download text from the free Internet or a subscription database and can email it, you can upload it to your Kindle. Amazon provides a kindle.com email address to all registered Kindle owners so that Kindle owners can upload documents onto their Kindles. Emailing a document to a Kindle automatically converts the document to a Kindle-compatible format. Amazon provides this conversion/uploading service for 10¢ per document. Kindle supports documents in .doc, .html, .htm, .txt, .jpeg, .gif, .bmp, and .png formats. Some Kindle users have reported problems with documents in .pdf and .rtf formats (Kindle’s .pdf-compatibility is in the experimental stage). I have had no problems whatsoever with uploading, reading and searching pdf files on my Kindle. I was able to upload and read an article in rtf format. However, the rft article disappeared the next time I turned on my Kindle.
Kindle Disadvantages:
1. Indexes are useless in Kindle. Kindle texts have no pages and therefore no page numbers. Indexes, cross references and footnotes referring to pages within a text are useless on a Kindle. This is the foremost disadvantage of reading scholarly material on a Kindle in my opinion. On the other hand, tables of contents are linked to sections in some texts. When reading scholarly material on a Kindle, I use tables of contents and the electronic search function to locate information within a text and compensate somewhat for the inability to effectively use indexes and cross-references.
2. Kindle’s interface is grey-scale. Kindle has a readable interface which shows photographs, charts and illustrations in grey-scale. Some users have complained that colored charts and diagrams do not effectively translate into grey-scale. The word on the street is that Amazon is working on a color interface for its next version of Kindle.
3. Navigating between text and footnotes is tricky. There is no way to do a side-by-side comparison of text and footnotes/endnotes. Viewing notes requires navigation between text and note pages. Some texts contain links to the footnotes; other texts do not have links to the notes. Navigation between unlinked notes and text is difficult, time-consuming and frustrating. Remember to bookmark your location in the text (or take down the location range which appears at the bottom of the Kindle screen) before leaving the text to view a note.
4. Kindles have been known to crash. The Kindle comes with a user’s guide which explains how to re-set a crashed Kindle. Amazon maintains a Kindle support webpage with helpful FAQs and contact information for customer support. My Kindle has an identifiable pre-crash “aura” of erratic behavior. When your Kindle is behaving erratically, you can avoid an imminent crash by turning off your Kindle, recharging it and, if necessary, re-setting it. I have found Kindle’s customer support to be very helpful and accessible.
For more information, contact Karen Breda at or 522.4407.