It is regrettable that ProQuest makes us read their materials using the poorly designed and ridiculously implemented app. There are other high quality apps that protect ownership and copyright, but this version from ProQuest is essentially unusable. For example, if I want to stop away from the iPad for a moment and it goes into standby, the Ebook Central app will give an error that the can not be displayed at this time and I need to reload the book, and then find where I left off. This is not user friendly and amounts to a mojo pain to use. Second, the note taking function is ridiculous. In does not allow me to select tact that I’d like to copy, and if I use the copy button at the bottom of the page, it gives me me a random selection of text from someplace near the page I’m reading. ProQuest, what is your goal with this software? So far my only outcome is absolute frustration. If you are going to demand that we use this to read your products, the invest in something that is capable of presenting the material without error, remembers what page I am reading, and is capable of rudimentary note taking for academic clients. Do these three things well and I can forgive some of the other shortcomings.

This app adds no value, only layers of frustration. No text to speech. Cumbersome set up. No quick start guide: they want you to register and sit through a webinar before you use it. Books saved to your bookshelf don’t show up unless you sign in with your institutional credentials each time you open the app. Books you download through the app don’t open in the app. If you make it through all the steps, you find the app is identical to the mobile website. There is no point to the it at all.

Two small points: (1) It is indeed frustrating that the app doesn’t keep my place, consider the example—when I’m at work reading a 400 page book on my phone, the scrolling on Safari to elucidate tangent points, and coming back, I find that my progress is lost entirely and I’m sent back to the book library page, and then when I press the book to access the text I’m sent, from there, to the first page of the book. This is very frustrating and makes the experience of using the app quite discontinuous. There should be a ‘locking’ function somehow, in an upcoming update. I’ve taken to remembering my page number and inserting it at the bottom to get back to where I was, prior, whenever I go off on tangents, but this seems unsustainable. Next is that (2) there is really terrible resolution when I zoom in and it is quite hard to read. This is a worse issue than the first and not helpful at all for people with visual issues. Overall, I feel like this app is working against me!

The app is clunky and slow. Many annoying things that make me not want to use the app as an e-reader. 1) The only way to turn a page is clicking the small arrow button at the bottom, no tapping or swiping the side of the page. 2) There is no way to view your pages in full screen, meaning you can’t hide the top and bottom menus. Some people don’t mind, but to a lot of people it can be a distraction and annoying. 3) the text re-size options are way too drastic. The middle default size is fine, but one step smaller the text is too small, and one step larger it’s almost too big. I think it’s a new app so I’m sure they are hoping to make it better. But this feels like an EARLY beta. I’m guessing the developers did the best they could with the time they were given. Probably had an unrealistic timeline given by the executives who have no clue about developing applications.