Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art and Writing

A kind of book depository where no one will get shot.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 0 comments link this post

Tacky title. Sorry.

But, Scribd is kind of a depository. A document depository. And I signed up for a free account, because that's what I do. [my Scribd profile]

So far, the only documents I have available are PDF's from the projects and such already on my Lone Prairie School blog. I doubt that I would put documents on Scribd that I don't also include elsewhere on my site. However, since most people don't read every blog or go through every page on this site, Scribd will be a great way to have access to all of the documents I make available for free.

I like the idea of people sharing the documents they have on their computer, though, I suppose, I'm a little Utopian in thinking that such documents are all going to be interesting. I was thinking of other possible uses, beyond the ones Scribd lists. Top of my mind, right now, is NaNoWriMo. Scribd could be a great way to provide long excerpts if you didn't want to end up with a huge number of long blog posts.

I've already used Google Docs (an absolute favorite of mine that I'm finding I use nearly every day) to publish information such as meeting minutes or meeting summaries that need to be read by multiple parties. I simply send them the link, the click it, and it matters not what kind of computer or security settings or software they have at their disposal; the link takes them to a fine, easily read and printed page on the internet.

I suspect that Scribd could be used in a similar manner for sites that are continually uploading PDF files and then manually linking them, but perhaps for more complex documents. For example, on the NRN-ND site that I manage, we have a document section with things like forms and applications. I link to the documents back here, which I manually uploaded and stored on this site, since I don't have the storage I'll eventually need for the free WordPress account. Scribd could be a handy solution for this, and save me some bandwidth issues on LonePrairie.net.

I'm rambling a bit. I am easily enthralled by the services available on the web for free, particularly when they seem to dovetail nicely into current needs for projects I'm involved in.

If you have a Scribd account, or an opinion on the service or how it could be used/abused, please leave a link or discussion in the comments section of this post. I would love to get some links and have a look at what's out there. If you're a writer, in particular, I'd like to hear your thoughts on such services as Google Docs and Scribd. I'd also like to know of other web sites that offer similar services in regards to documents and tools that would be handy for writers or people with information to publish.

Find out more about Scribd here.