Mobile Library Services

Best Practices

Edited by Charles Harmon, Michael Messina

Publication date:

13 February 2013

Length of book:

162 pages

Publisher

Scarecrow Press

Dimensions:

228x153mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780810887527

Just as Andrew Carnegie’s support changed the landscape of public libraries in America, Apple’s launch of the iPhone on June 29, 2007 forever altered how people expected to interact with services. Libraries, like every other kind of organization, must now make their services—not just their catalogs—available on an array of mobile devices.

Mobile Library Servicesprovides 11 proven ways to reach out to mobile users and increase your library’s relevance to their day-to-day lives. Librarians detail how they created mobile apps to how they went mobile on a shoestring budget. Written by public, academic, and special librarians, these 11 best practices offer models for libraries of every type and size.

• Introduction by Scott La Counte, Author of Going Mobile: Developing Apps for Your Library Using Basic HTML Programming
• “A Student-Library Collaboration to Create CULite: An iPhone App for the Cornell University Library” by Matthew Connolly and Tony Cosgrave, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, NY
• “Launching a Mobile Initiative: Outreach Strategies” by Alexandra W. Gomes, Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, George Washington University, Washington, DC
• “Oregon State University Libraries Go Mobile” by Laurie Bridges, Hannah Gascho Rempel, and Evviva Weinraub, The Valley Library, Oregon State University, Corvallis
• “Making the Library Mobile on a Shoestring Budget” by Helen Bischoff, Michele Ruth, and Ben Rawlins, Georgetown College Library, Kentucky
• “The Orange County Library System: The OCLS Shake It! App” by Cassandra Shivers, Orange County Library System, Orlando, FL
• “The NCSU Libraries’ Mobile Scavenger Hunt” by Anne Burke, Adrienne Lai, and Adam Rogers, North Carolina State University Libraries, Raleigh
• “Responsive Web Design for Libraries: Beyond the Myth of the Mobile Web” by Matthew Reidsma, Grand Valley State University Libraries, Allendale, MI
• “Using iPads to Revitalize Traditional Library Tours” by Amanda Binder, Sarah Sagmoen, Natalie Tagge and Nancy Weichert, Brookens Library, University of Illinois, Springfield
• “Going Mobile at Illinois” by Joshua Bishoff, University of Illinois Libraries, Urbana
• “The Gimme Engine: A True Story of Innovation, Creativity and Fun” by Aimee Fifarek and Ann Porter, Scottsdale Public Library, Scottsdale, AZ
• “Building the Montana State University Library Mobile Web App with the jQuery Mobile Framework” by Jason A. Clark, Montana State University Library, Bozeman

This volume contains 11 chapters contributed by 23 practicing librarians in public and academic settings. Offering examples from around the U.S., the contributors discuss specific applications for mobile-library services as well as activities such as scavenger hunts and library tours. Whether readers work in a public or academic library looking to go mobile, or they are seeking ideas for specific apps to create or implement, they will find that this book covers the topic in a user-friendly and approachable manner, with examples drawn from experience. Each chapter includes references, and there is an index. This book will inspire and support the integration of mobile technologies on all scales into academic and public libraries.