I'm counting the many social networking sites I subscribe to -- Friendster; Hi5; Multiply and of course, Facebook. Apart from these, I'm also in Flicker, Slideshare, You Tube and Photo Bucket. I have more than two email accounts and I keep a slew of mailing lists and e-groups of varying interests. This goes to show that a sliver of my life has been allotted to Internet technology and the many perks it offers.
And it seems that I have not exhausted all it's treasures, and, trash as well.
Just recently, I discovered Scribd when a faculty asked for Hemingway's The Old Man and The Sea. It's a book read in high school so, we could not offer the print version. To go the extra mile, a library staff checked the database of the high school library. I checked Google. Google gave me the e-book version through Scribd.
One needed to sign in for free to view, read, print, upload and download documents. In my initial walk through of the home page, it appears that a wealth of information is right there for the picking. Original works from poems to essays, plays to novels are also available. The website provides a list of topics and subjects linked to documents in pdf. and ppt.
I'm still new to Scribd so there's a lot to explore. Check the link and do your own exploring!
Scribd is a good document sharing tool but it enables users to upload copyrighted material with no restrictions. Scribd is getting rich off of other people's work; they are enabling wholesale rip-off of stuff that ethical folks pay for.
ReplyDeleteAS a librarian maybe you should check into some of the recent publications about digitization of copyrighted material (even for educational use) without permission from the rightsholder. (such as the Google Book settlement case). Scribd should be sued.
Writing an essay or dissertation for your certificate requires that you speak to your audience (your professor) and use words that are familiar to him or her. If possible, write the essay or dissertation that is in their area of expertise.
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