Wendy's iPhone Thoughts

At meeting today, Cole Camplese mentioned that we should think about how the iPhone could be used for research, among other things. That got me to thinking about accessing PSU's library resources.

First, I was able to use CAT to locate a book, a specific journal, and an e-journal using both the basic and advance search (drop down menu makes scrolling half-screen appear).

To locate a specific full-text article, I was connected to the Ebscohost Professional Development database. I located the article by entering the year, volume, issue and starting page. Once the article was located, I had the option of downloading a PDF or emailing it.

The PDF opened fine, but took a little time to load. It was only six pages, so lengthy articles may time out before they download. Sometimes there is an option to open up the article in HTML, which might be a better option if you only have access to an iPhone.

I also tried the email option. I emailed the article to both my gmail account, which I could view easily on my iPhone, and also to my PSU account. Everything worked smoothly, except after I sent the email, a pop-up window appeared confirming that my email was sent, and I couldn't make it go away. Nonetheless, the article was sent to both my email addresses within seconds - both with a pdf attachment that opened just fine.

What does this mean for faculty or students doing research?

1) They can search for books and articles at Penn State using the iphone.

2) Once they locate a specific article, they can find out its physical location in the library - or if it is in an e-journal or available in an online format from a database, they can view the abstract or full-length article in PDF (if short in length) or HTML (if available) using their iPhone.

3) They can email a copy (PDF) of the article to their PSU or preferred email account, so they can view/printout the article.

3) They can share abstracts, articles with colleagues or other students via email.

The only problem is the Library's time-out feature. One has to be quick - however, I was taking notes between tests, so the inactivity may have caused it rather than a problem with the edge network or iphone itself.