New Technologies: Libraries & Beyond

"Going Mobile with Library Services"

Carrie Gits and Rich Ackerman
Alvin Sherman Library
Nova Southeastern University
July 30, 2009

Overview

This talk discusses how libraries are using the mobile web to deliver services to patrons and provides a simple template for providing library information on mobile platforms.

Handouts

Slides from our presentation are available at:

http://bit.ly/yOWR2

Recommended reading

Handheld Librarian: http://www.handheldlib.blogspot.com/

Mobile Libraries: http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/

Mobile Technologies in Libraries: http://web.simmons.edu/~fox/pda/

Wireless (and Mobile) Internet Use: Pew Internet & American Life Project : http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/12-Wireless-Internet-Use.aspx

Computers in Libraries, May 2009. Full issue on mobile web

Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web - Luca Passani
http://www.passani.it/gap/

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki. M-Libraries http://www.libsuccess.org/index.php?title=M-Libraries

Nielsen Mobile.  Critical Mass: The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web. July
2008
http://www.nielsenmobile.com/documents/CriticalMass.pdf

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 20, 2009: Mobile Usability
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mobile-usability.html

Flickr collection of screen shots: http://www.flickr.com/photos/users_lib/

Web standards

W3C Markup Validation Service:
http://validator.w3.org/

XHMTL Mobile Profile specification
http://member.openmobilealliance.org/ftp/Public_documents/MCE/Permanent_documents/OMA-TS-XHTMLMP-V1_2-20080331-A.zip

W3C Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0 - Basic Guidelines
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-mobile-bp-20080729/

Source code

An example of a simple mobile website is downloadable in a zip file from http://www.nova.edu/library/seflin/Archive.zip. It contains six files:

• contacts.htm
• directions.htm
• hours.htm
• index.htm
• loanperiods.htm
• mobilelibrary.dwt

mobilelibrary.dwt is a Dreamweaver template with which the others are constructed. It is not necessary to use the template but it simplifies maintenance.

The files can be unzipped into a folder on your web server and should just work as is. You will need to update them with information about your library :)

If you have any question feel free to email Rich at hackerma at nova.edu.

References

James A. Buczynski.  Libraries begin to Engage Their Menacing Mobile Phone Hordes Without Shhhh! Internet Reference Services Quarterly. 2008 13(2-3) pp. 261-269. doi: 10.1080/10875300802103916

Lorcan Dempsey.  Always On: Libraries in a world of permanent connectivity.  First Monday. January 2009 14 (1-5).

Ellyssa Kroski . On the Move with the Mobile Web: Libraries and Mobile Technologies. Library Technology Reports. July, 2008 44 (5)

Keren Mills. M-Libraries: Information Use on The Move.  A Report from the Arcadia Programme. The Open University, University of Cambridge. May 25, 2009
http://arcadiaproject.lib.cam.ac.uk/docs/M-Libraries_report.pdf