Mobile Library Technical Development: Opportunities and Challenges

Notes from Mobile Libraries Conference
June 22, 2009

Tony Tin
Athabasca University, Canada

Why mobile?

1. AU/OU students study from a distance
2. students have the devices already
3. novelty of gadget
4. accessibility of mobile devices

Athabasca University Library Mobile Library Project provide learners with access to library services and learning resources.

http://library.athabascau.ca/lib-services/libserv.php

Mobile site includes friendly:

• OPAC
• digital reading room (repository for learning objects)
• digital reference center

Functionality of mobile site:

• Auto detect and reformat
• learning object reuse
• easy web maintenance
• multimedia file support
• ipodcasting
• search
• mobile content conversion on the fly
• AirPac (OPAC) Search (wireless catalog)
• OPAC search on Mobile

In future-

• books jackets
• table of contents
• reviews

Mobile Device Automatic Detector

• design and develop software api to detect device info
• type, name, o/s, screen res, image types supported
• establish a profile device repository to store device specs
• generate profile ontology and output rdfs or owl
• provide mobile profile retrieving services
• that can be easily consumed by other applications
• SOA
• xml format data exchanging between server and mobile client
• xsl selection dependent on mobile device profile
• multilingual support
• multiplatform support
• Two thousand phones profiled into database
• whitepaper

Projects:

• Mobile ESL
• m-learning (mobile learning) develop and test approaches to ESL
• Mobile Workplace English Project
• Using Apple iphone
• IPhone App Project
• Designed to facilitate access to ebooks and ejournals - using stanza
• Mobile friendly library resources project
• study of ther mobile friendliness of E-journals
• did a study of all of their eresources and rated them 1-3 mobile friendly- not too friendly
• Really important to find out what device the students are using

Open Library 2.0
Hassan Sheikh, The Open University (UK)

• Auto detect and reformat implementation and partnership with AU
• redesigned interface for mobiles
• customized search engine
• 16,500 page hits since Oct 2007
• other depts in ou are interested to join up

Most popular pages

• homepage
• search
• hours
• news
• jobs
• events
  
• contact us

Services they are piloting:

• sms services - renewals, overdues notifications
• text referencing services
• mobile opac interface - in single interface
• adapt athabasca's digital reading room model
• mobile access to scope of online database of libraries
• libraries audio tours
• Mobile Safari
• learning objects

Misc Thoughts

• web based vs sms
• Notre Dame had workshop with apple and att
• Talkative - text to speech for iPhone
  
• If we can tap into the use of mobiles for teaching
• greater need for federated searching
• need to develop digital/info literacy material for mobile
• collab with other universities on mobile development
• explore, experiment, take risks!