PDFs and the New Way

There are days I would love to have all of my readings and “papers” in an entirely electronic format. Surely it's time to leave actual paper to purely enjoyable pursuits? I should be able to download a journal article into a reader of some sort, highlight it and annotate it just like I would with a paper copy. I should be able to copy-and-paste the quotes I want to keep into my citation manager (can we adapt one to work on eReaders, please?), attach the whole file for later use and then use the citation manager to shuffle through the journal articles in order to find the one I was looking for.

Is that too much to ask for?

I have double-ups of everything because I can't highlight PDFs and I can't copy-and-paste print. Then you get the occasional PDF where you can't highlight OR copy-and-paste the text because it's either a scanned document (little better than a snapshot of the original) or it's been locked so the copy function is disabled. What, on God's good, green earth, is the point of that? What am I going to do with your precious document that would make you think copying a sentence is something that must be disabled? I'm talking to you, ELT Journal. If I can save a copy of the PDF, I've already copied the entire text. Just thought I'd point that out. Having to physically re-type every quote I want to use for no good reason whatsoever achieves nothing except my personal annoyance.

It's bad enough when, in this day and age, you still get databases and eJournals which don't have a 'download citation' feature. Hello! It's the Twenty-First Century! Offering journal articles without downloadable citation files is like offering scones without jam. It makes you seem uncultured or miserly.

We're almost there, people. The technology already exists, but hasn't been put together yet. Come on: an eReader that can allow me to do the same things with electronic Journal articles that I can do with the paper copies, a citation manager that works on eReaders, and databases and journals that understand what people actually do with their texts and offer the right kind of files to play with. Then we can all sit down for a nice Devonshire tea with scones and jam.

Also, I want an iLiad, but someone at iRex needs to realise that I can buy two computers for the same price as one iLiad, which isn't good. Kind of hard to justify that, even if the whole eReader-meets-jotting-paper thing is a little bit brilliant.