Towards Mobile Enhanced Digital Collections

Notes from M-Libraries Conference
June 24, 2009

Tito Sierra
NCSU Libraries

Tito compared 1960s star trek tricorder as early model for mobile computing.

He spoke about how the iphone technology provides rich toolset for enhancing mobile experience for accessing digital collections. We can leverage mobile technology to create new and improved interfaces to digital collections, reducing disconnect between user and the

Two basic technologies improve this experience:

1. touch based interface
1. swipe gesture
2. interact directly with digital objects
3. pinch and zoom (native support in iPhone)
4. fluid interface for navigating image details (national gallery "love art" app)
   
2. geotag and geolocation
1. geographic navigation of content
2. current location as a content filter
   (around me app)
   

Tito discussed the
Duke Mobile Library Digital collections iPhone application

and then demoed the pilot NCSU Wolfwalk project which includes:

• photos of campus from archives
  
• a real experience of accessing special collections, current model of accessing digital collections is desktop
  
• viewing these items on campus in a locational context. You can do this with geotagged content. Discoverability of content in a serendipitous way.
• geographic way of accessing content
• images from the archives aggregated around campus locations
• alpha list of sites/campus locations
  
• uses zoom feature to look at details in archived photos
• map it function to allow user to orient himself on campus
  

Tito would be happy to be contacted for more info on the tech aspects of app creation.

Lessons Learned:

• wasn't easy to repurpose metadata from archived images
  
• mobile app development is very different from website development
• rapidly developing area
• used new map kit available

Future Directions

• augmented reality
• layer (android)
• hold device- look at a building and have content layer built on top
• Alumni stories - alumni could upoad info/photos/geolocation to add to the collection. You would need to create an area to store this information.
• Lots of very interesting applications, campus tours, etc.
  
  

Advice to other Libraries:
Experiment! Start with a doable project. They used the 60 most important sites on campus. they had all GIS info on these. They had an editorial process to make sure all of the data was there. They aggregated photos by site, easier to do as a pilot project.