What are the uses of an iPad for an academic staff?

I don't think that an iPad does anything magically different for academic personell than for anybody else. Some of my colleagues review papers on them, some use them as a very small laptop while travelling, and (I presume) most just use it to read the news, play games, or slack off otherwise while in the train or plane.

In summary - if you have no idea what you would use it for then you probably don't need it.

Whether a tool works for you or not depends on your work style, so general recommendations are difficult.

However, you can use it for example

• to read digital articles. There are some literature management tools that work well with iOS devices, and you can read any PDF with readers like GoodReader. With the later you can, for example, highlight text and export the highlighted text (and any notes) via eMail.
• You can also directly access your files if you use, e.g., Dropbox (can be helpful in meetings).
• There are also apps available for classroom management, if you do a lot of teaching.
• You can use it for presentations (Keynote on iOS is okay).
• It's nice if you travel to conferences (for emails and the like).

In short, there are many uses, but it depends on your work style. Question I'd have would be how your colleagues use the iPad (if it's an department wide thing). Also: That's a nice problem to have. :-)

An iPad connects to HDMI, so you don't need to bring your laptop to class (for slides).

With an added keyboard, and access to a remote server, you can work seamlessly from everywhere (on whatever OS you prefer). If you live in Europe you probably have, at least, 3g mobile access everywhere. Depending on your circumstances, this might even eliminate your need for a regular laptop.

A decade or more ago, everyone had papers everywhere. Then we started the paper less office, and an iPad works well here. Save all documents in some online drive, and you have access everywhere. Put the iPad next to your desktop keyboard, and you will never have to print anything ever (mostly).

The iPad is a decent, but not perfect, replacement for taking notes on paper. Snap a picture, and start chopping away.

There are many great apps you could use, for instance for people in math there's an app that converts hand written equations to fully valid LaTeX. You can easily sketch concepts and forward by mail.

Of course all of these apply to other tablets equally.