Desktop Stationary Book Holders and Portable Book Holders

Last month we briefly discussed book holders that were mobile and/or articulating. This month we'll take a look at ones that are stationary on the desktop, or portable and lightweight. These latter types of book holder are generally more popular, not only because they are relatively less expensive than the mobile or articulating types, but also because they are simply designed yet sufficient to meet the requirements of a book holder.

It may be recalled that a good book holder allows its user to read without having to support the book. When doing certain tasks, this greatly increases productivity without stressing your hands and arms. Most book holders have additional features, such as line guides, page fasteners, and height and angle adjustability. These features make the book holder more versatile, and hence more useful.

The Desktop Stationary Book Holder

For most people, a desktop book holder that is stationary is enough to fulfill its purpose: holding a book open-faced at an easily viewable angle. For those who need to read while typing at a keyboard, this is ideal, whether the book holder is placed to the left or the right of the typist. A product like the Standard Atlas Book Holder from Dainoff Designs is one of the best examples of such a book holder. It is a solidly built stationary device that can hold your book (and its pages) in place; it can be raised and angled appropriately, and contains a line-guide for easier reading of the lines on a page. It is essentially like a document holder but can support more weight.

The Portable Book Holder

If you are a student who does a lot of notetaking on a laptop or at a desktop computer, having a book holder that is lightweight and portable can make studying so much easier. Transferring text from book to computer is made less cumbersome when you don't have to constantly lean over to read the next line in a book or hold down a page. It can come in handy at other times, too: for example, when you are cooking or doing something that requires careful attention to numbered instructions. At these times, your hands and arms are busy doing one thing, but you don't have the time or patience to stop, fiddle with your book of instructions, and resume what you were doing a minute before. A book holder can definitely help in such circumstances, especially if it's portable. An example of such a book holder is the StudyPod Ultra-Portable Book Holder from Genio, this month's featured product. In addition to being a lightweight and portable book holder, it also can store school supplies, like pens, pencils, calculators, etc. The applications for such book holders are only limited by your imagination.