Mobile Devices, Libraries and Policy panel : ALA 2009

Hasty post today because I am busy but want to come back and read this when I have time...

Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian, has blogged about a panel discussion on mobile phones and libraries held at ALA conference 2009.

Mobile Library services for iPhone and iPod Touch

Take a look at this brand new service developed by Orange County Libraries in the States, a breathrough way to explore the Library using your iPhone or iPod Touch:



PS. OCLC is a Koha library!

Horizon Report : 2008 Australia - New Zealand Edition.

Just released in a new series of regional and sector-based Horizon Reports is Horizon Report: 2008 Australia-New Zealand Edition.

The new series is a product of the New Media Consortium’s Horizon Project, an ongoing research project that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, or creative expression within higher education around the globe.

The project drew on an ongoing discussion among knowledgeable leaders and practitioners in Australia and New Zealand business, industry, and education, as well as published resources, current research and practice, and the expertise of the NMC community itself.

The Horizon Project's Australia-New Zealand Advisory Board probed current trends and challenges in post compulsory education as they uniquely are expressed in Australia and New Zealand, explored possible topics for the Report, and over several rounds of rankings and dialog, selected the final technologies.

The Horizon Report: 2008 Australia-New Zealand Edition (304K, 32 pp) is available now. The report is free, and has been released with a Creative Commons license to facilitate its use, easy duplication, and broad distribution.

HLT Staff: I have a printed copy on my desk!

Cell phones : the next big thing in libraries?

While in Auckland last week I gave up trying to find an internet machine in order to check my emails.

The hostel had internet to the room - but I needed a cat 5 cable (I don't make a point of carrying around network media...) There were numerous internet cafes - down the hill, seedy looking and $10 an hour - and while I could have gone to the cafe next to Auckland Library and used their free internet connection the coffee was crap and I would have had to lug my Dell Vostro around all day (a weight lifting exercise of some merit and there was that hill to consider ....)

Then I remembered my cellphone - hooray for pocket computers! It is just so dam easy and quick and convenient to check my emails that way. Wish I'd remembered my internet capable cellphone while I was in Singapore: had to pay $NZ40 for the first hour of internet access in the hotel!

After a hideous experience a few years back when my desktop got hammered by a virus I now use my computer as an access point only. In addition to saving all my work to the network server I have also shifted my bookmarks to delicious, post links I want to remember to this blog, and have copies of all emails, from all 5 of my email accounts, sent to my gmail account. This means I can not only work at any desk in the workplace, but I can get my emails from anywhere - including while lying in bed in a student hostel.

I was chatting to Wendy at work a week or so ago about a report I had been reading about the phenomenal uptake of cell phones especially in Africa. There is a whole continent apparently skipping the wired world and going straight to wireless. Here in Horowhenua we find growing numbers of people are not bothering with a landline and using cellphones only .... noticeable in Shannon initially but becoming more frequent. I observed that I think cell phones will be the next big thing for libraries; we need to think all the different ways that we could be utilizing that technology, a communication device in the pockets of most people over 13 and under 65.

I found an interesting report from Nielsen Mobile : Critical Mass - The Worldwide State of the Mobile Web.

Key findings:

• 15.6 percent of mobile subscribers in the US, 12.9 percent in the UK and 11.9 percent in Italy actively use the mobile Internet. In New Zealand the figure is 1.6%.


• In the US , mobile internet use has reached a critical mass as an advertising medium: 40 million.


• In the US, there is almost an even split with the same % aged over 35 as under 35.


• and there are approximately as many teenagers using the mobile Internet as there are persons over the age of 55 (5.1 million persons age 13–17 and 4.4 aged 55 and older).


• The mobile Internet audience is not overly concentrated in high-income households.


• 82 percent of iPhone users access the mobile Internet, making them five times as likely to do so as the average mobile consumer. Remember iphones are still very new and expensive, and due to their strong brand their use will mushroom. (ipod generation)
  


• Mobile Internet users do not visit nearly the same number of individual sites as Internet users do over the PC. PC Internet users visit more than 100 sites on average vs 6.4 for mobile.


• Email, weather, news, maps and search predominant uses.

Critical mass is when a sufficient mass has formed to sustain a chain reaction. The researchers suggest that mobile Internet is today at a point of seeing rapid growth in consumer adoption
and, in turn, mobile Internet marketing.

So how are we as libraries going to prepare for this trend which will hit NZ? How can we maximise the value of having almost everyone having a pocket receiving device, GPS, audio-video and still image recording device in their pockets?