Technology + User Needs: 7- Mobile phones, iPhones and Library Services

Tues. July 21, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm, DIRC training room
Mobile phones, iPhones and Library Services
Nicole Hennig + Remlee Green

Mobile phones/iPhones technology overview
- why we will focus mainly on the iPhone today
- some stats on iPhone usage: Smartphone Usage & Brand Study , iPhone users do more than make calls, iPhone most popular device for mobile web browsing
- stats on mobile phone usage at MIT: MIT-Mobile_Web_Stats_06-2009 (pdf)

- iPhone feature overview
(Apple features page: iPhone)
best features (in my opinion)

large, bright screen - so easy to read, clear and sharp
touchscreen with multi-touch interface (video showing web browsing, 1 min, 39 sec)
the iTunes App Store - one place to buy apps, many are free, most are very inexpensive
(video demo of App Store)
it's a complete handheld computer, not just a phone, can get online wherever cell phone coverage is, don't need to find wifi zone
integration of iPod with phone is handy (headphones, music pauses automatically when phone rings)
location awareness, Google Maps (video demo of maps)
ebook applications: Stanza (free, great for public domain ebooks), Kindle app, and others. See Ebooks have a future in iTunes (Wired Magazine, Nov. 25, 2008), and Kindle iPhone app brings the bookstore to your back seat (Wired, March 4, 2009)

worst features (in my opinion)

sometimes virtual keyboard is not so easy (but it gets better with use), would be nice to have option for external keyboard (like Palm had) (when using it as computer replacement)
(video showing keyboard use 3 min, 6 sec)
too many clicks to switch from WiFi to 3G
doesn't view Flash content (yet), except in YouTube app
AT&T only vendor (so far)
poor battery life (newest phone is supposed to be better)

- the Android platform and why it's important:
    Android (operating system) - Wikipedia
   "a catalyst for innovation" (video)
   Google’s Android to Run Laptops, Challenge Microsoft

MIT mobile site
- overview of MIT's mobile web site - m.mit.edu
- our MIT Libraries beta site for iPhones (coming soon)

mobile tour of the library
- Bostock Library Walking Audio Tour: Duke University Libraries offer MP3 files to download on your own MP3 player

text messaging service
- Simmons College Library's catalog sends text messages from the library catalog with item recors attached.

mobile collections
- Duke University Libraries offer digitized image collections (over 32,000 images) through the DukeMobile iPhone app (demo and press release)

mobile instruction
- Washington State University Libraries "How To ..." - Help with Library Resources and Tools: instructional podcasts

new titles lists
- The Institut fuer Informationswissenschaft in Saarbruecken, Germany offers Twitter for new titles.

OPACs
- Mobile library catalogs (reviews a few mobile interfaces for OPACs)

See M-Libraries wiki by Meredith Farkas for more lists of what libraries are doing.

Mobile interfaces from library vendors
- PubMed for Handhelds
PubMed on Tap
- IEEE Xplore Mobile (blog post about it)
- RefWorks Mobile (screenshots)
- TextaLibrarian

Ideas for services we could offer
- what we do now:
mobile web pages (coming soon), podcast: Scholarly Communication, Twitter feed (usable in mobile clients, such as Tweetie for iPhone)

- brainstorm ideas for other service ideas
idea: news blog with a WPtouch plugin to optimize reading on mobile devices
more...

Technology + User Needs