DiscoTech Activity 4: Zinnio

Way back when we first got Zinnio I did set up the accounts..I seem to hazily recall some confusion between switching from the library page to the Zinnio page and back, but may this was in an earlier iteration or it only happens initially. I tried checking out some magazines today and it seemed like a fairly smooth process. We don't seem to get a ton of calls regarding Zinnio so I don't know if this means not a lot of people are using it or people are using it and finding it easy to use. We do get calls about e-books and One Click Digital and this is usually people who have something that is confusing them.

In any case, back to Zinnio. I wish they could come up with a way to not have 2 accounts. I get that there is the library page for limiting the choice to what the library subscribes to and the Zinnio page allows one to read, but it seems like there should be a way to do this without two accounts. Although once I have this set up, I don't really notice the two accounts thing, but it does seem better not to frustrate users in early stages (or at any point in the process.)

Zinnio does load magazines quickly and they are easy to move about with the viewer. I am confused about the search feature as I couldn't get it to "find" anything. In the National Geographic Travel magazine it couldn't find the word "geographic" nor other words in titles of articles. I searched other magazines for words that were in titles or clearly mentioned in the articles or captions, and nothing, nothing, nothing..so what does "search" do?

It is very nice to have access to a number of magazines, esp ones that are pricey like the Economist. I wish there were more children's magazines and I thought I had seen a short story mystery magazine-Ellery Queen, but maybe I was looking at the overall Zinnio site and not our library Zinnio site, still there is a pretty good and seemingly growing selection.

If you don't have access to a computer/phone/reader, than this isn't much of a help, but for people who do have access to technology it is a nice resource.