Report by Rob Hardy, Digital and Web Librarian:
On Tuesday 8th May I attended the Mobile Technology in Libraries event hosted by Evidence Base (Birmingham City University). This information sharing event was part of the
JISC m-libraries project aimed at supporting "the emerging m-Library community".
The
opening keynote was delivered by James Clay, and focused on the rapid spread of mobile technology over the past few years. Although "only" 45% of UK adults accessed the web via a mobile phone in 2011, the figure rose to 71% for 16-24 year olds, and 50% of all web searches are performed on a digital device. However, the common assumption that younger people today are "digital natives" is open to question - just because someone can use technology (for some purposes), it doesn't mean they are able to use it effectively for learning.
Clay suggested that we should be
informed but not
led by learners. Often, if users are asked what they want, they will tell you more of the same, just a little better - they may not have an appreciation of the new opportunities technology can bring, and won't always know what they want until they are shown it. As always, in any new developments we will be constrained by the limitations of time and money, and staff will need appropriate training and support. There will be the need to consider priorities and make sure we can give a good answer to the question "why?" before embarking on a new venture.
The keynote was followed by four lightning talks. First, Helga Perry from University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire spoke on the
steps required to get Elsevier's Science Direct mobile app working with Athens and Shibboleth authentication. Next, Alison McNab from De Montfort University addressed the barriers to accessing subscription eContent on mobile devices. The solution offered by many publishers is to provide an app. However, these are device-specific, and are often not available for Blackberries (used by a "surprising number" of new students).
Next, Matt Borg from Sheffield Hallam University spoke on the
work that they've been doing to develop a mobile library gateway. A major part of developing this was an evaluation and rationalisation of their existing content. He emphasised that "there is no fold" - a design has to be flexible to accommodate the range of devices and screen sizes that will be used to view it. In analysing statistics, they found a significant increase in the proportion of mobile devices used to view their website from 2010 to 2011. The final lightning talk of the morning was on using
SirsiDynix's BookMyne app to deliver a mobile library catalogue, from Tim Fletcher at Birkbeck.
Matt Machell's session on
Building mobile-friendly sites with responsive design outlined a way to build sites that offer a good user experience across a range of devices. Responsive web design uses a flexible grid that scales as the browser window is resized. Developing a single flexibile site removes the additional work involved in keeping mobile and desktop sites in sync, and the poor user experience offered by mobile sites on larger screens. It also avoids the increasing fragmentation resulting from the development of apps targetting particular devices. The downsides of responsive design include that it is hard to retrofit on an existing site. Also, as with all mobile websites, they don't give access to functions of mobile devices such as GPS and the camera. However, it is possible to wrap a mobile site in an app (such as
PhoneGap) to give access to these, and get a bit of the benefit of both approaches.
Following Lunch, there was a further session of lightning talks. Peter Kargbo, Law Librarian at Manchester Metropolitan Uni spoke on
using apps for legal research. Next, Sarah Barker from Yale College reported on a project they have run to
loan iPads for use within the library. The iPads they supply are pre-loaded with a range of apps that have been recommended by faculties. Maintenance of the pads has proved to be quite labour-intensive, however, as there is frequently the need to restore deleted apps, or log users out of various services when the pads are returned. Gary Green from Surrey County Council presented
on a range of (non-mobile enabled) projects they are running, with the aim of crowdsourcing ideas for how to incorporate mobile technology into these. The final lightning talk of the afternoon was by Adam Watson from Leeds Metropolitan on "
Students' mobile preferences: are our services meeting their needs?". Leeds Metropolitan have been reviewing their current provision, and what "competitors" are doing in mobile access, and are aiming to create a mobile library site based on Wordpress.
Then afternoon breakout session I attended was presented by Keren Mills of the Open University, on
resource discovery on mobile devices. As part of the MACON project, they have been working on creating their own mobile discovery interface, using the EBSCO discovery API, rather than using the ready-provided mobile interface. This allows them to better integrate discovery with their other content. She spoke on the differing expectations of librarians and users - the advanced functionality in search interfaces expected by librarians, is little-used by most users who tend to prefer a simple, Google-like interface. She also spoke about usability of various document formats on mobile devices (the ubiquitous PDF tends to be particularly poor, plain text and HTML much better), and summarised some good-practice points for mobile design:
- Know your audience
- Leave space around buttons and links
- Reduce typing and clicks
- Reduce download sizes
- Include a search option
- Make authentication easy
The final session summed up the m-libraries project so far, and sought views on how to proceed. One of the most important themes of the day was that mobile is not a bolt-on extra. In both Matt Machell's and Keren Mills' sessions, a "mobile-first" approach was advocated for any redesign of a library's web presence. This can lead to improved usability for the majority of users, and also better accessibility (as criteria for a good mobile web experience tend to be quite close to those for accessibility). It was emphasised that there is a wealth of experience developing in the use of mobile technology in libraries, and that we should be seeking to draw on this experience rather than constantly re-inventing the wheel.
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The m-libraries website has a
community forum, seeking to gather this experience, and the
conference takes place on 24-26th September this year. Details of all speakers, and links to slides and other materials, are available on the
event's pages at lanyrd.com.
