Week 8 - Zoho Writer, GoogleDocs and Web 2.0 Awards

 

For a reader's advisory assignment I had to read this graphic novel - this is a new genre for me and it was extremely thought provoking read!

Taken from http://www.readalike.org/

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood (2003)

Author: Marjane Satrapi
Genre: Graphic Novel (Memoir)

Book Summary:
This autobiographical novel tells the story of Marjane Satrapi’s childhood in Tehran. The story commences in 1979 when Marjane is 10-years old and wearing the veil has recently become mandatory due to the Islamic Revolution. Marjane, an only child, lives in a very progressive household where dissent is common and more than one of her relatives has been imprisoned due to his Communist beliefs. The story captures Marjane’s (also known as Marji) childhood from when she was ten up until her adolescent years of fourteen. Her personal life at home is inextricably bound to the downfall of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution, and the war with Iraq. However, her personal life is also contradictory to what she learns at school and what she sees on the news. By the time Marjane is 14, she has become rebellious and the regime has only gotten more repressive. One day she returns home from shopping for jeans and discovers that an Iraqi missile has bombed the family next door. No one in the family survived. Shortly after this occurrence, her parents decide to send her to Austria to live with friends of the family and to attend a French school.

The Persepolis summary was copied into a Zoho Writer document and then published on my blog! Easy technology to use and eliminates the need to purchase software as everything is done in the "cloud". I have used Google Docs on one occasion and the idea of it was good but the practical aspect of it was actually quite frustrating. I had uploaded a powerpoint presentation and it could not cope with the graphics and size of the file. So once I did get it into GoogleDocs, I had to simplify and edit a large portion of it unfortunately.

Looked at the 3 sites in the shortlisted "book" category. Lulu had some nice features of being able to print your books - thought it would be great to print cookbooks of my family's favourite recipes and give them as gifts. VuFind combining Web 2.0 and the OPAC, having all resources in one locations is probably the a direction that libraries will be considering in the not too distant future. Also looked at the "maps" as always interesting to explore with Google Satellite. Have bookmarked the site for future web surfing.