MANAGING TECHNO

LOGY· Keeping Moving: Smart Phone and

Mobile Technologies in theAcademic Libraryby Geoffrey LittleAvailable online 9 April 2011

Any librarian would be hard-pressed to claim that he or she hasnot noticed the proliferation of smart phones and mobiledevices over the past couple of years. Who, for example, has

not seen an ad by Apple telling us “There's an App for that”? Withinthe academic environment, EDUCAUSE reported that 62.7% of NorthAmerican undergraduates now have an internet capable smart phoneor mobile device including a Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, Android, andmore than half of them said that they accessed the Internet throughtheir devices on a daily basis to read and send e-mail, check the newsand weather, use GPS, get maps and directions, and access socialnetworking sites like Facebook and Twitter. A smaller, but growinggroup, also used their phones to do online banking, shop, or downloadand streammusic and videos.1 What does it mean for libraries that anincreasing number of younger users execute so many social andprofessional tasks on one small piece of equipment? What kind oflandscape are we contemplating when information providers nowoffer dedicated mobile web sites or applications for consumers?Whatdoes it mean when, to paraphrase American Libraries' columnistMeredith Farkas, we can have a library in our pocket?2

Smart phones and mobile technologies are changing the ways weconsume, distribute, and create information. The online PC MagazineEncyclopedia (http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/) defines a smartphone as “a cellular telephone with built-in applications and Internetaccess. Smart phones provide digital voice service as well as textmessaging, e-mail, Web browsing, still and video cameras, MP3 playerand video viewing…smart phones can run myriad applications,turning the once single-minded cell phone into a mobile computer.”Smart phones are also knownmore broadly as “mobile devices,” as arethe iPad and Kindle, which cannot make phone calls. Until fairlyrecently, a user had to be sitting in front of a desktop computer or witha laptop to connect to the Internet, send an e-mail, edit documents, ordownload an electronic file. In contrast, a smart phone like an AppleiPhone or Google Android offers its owner many personal computer-like functions inminiature and on the go anywhere, anytime, providedthe user can get a wireless Internet connection. Early versions ofsmartphones appeared in the mid-1990s, but it wasn't until the earlypart of this century that they appeared on the market in the form wenowknow them. The Blackberry took off in 2002, the PalmTreo offeredweb browsing that same year, and various less sophisticated phonescould take photos, record voice and video, and offered relativelyclunky videogames.3 Apple's iPhone, first launched in 2007, changedthe conversation and offered users many features of a personal

Geoffrey Little, Concordia University, Canada<Geoffrey.r.little@gmail.com>.

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computer and a universe of the now ubiquitous “apps” or applications.The App Store within iTunes was launched in July 2008 and two yearslater, there were approximately 300,000 third-party (i.e., non-Apple)apps available, many of them for free. By January 2011, the Storecelebrated its eleven billionth app download. In 2008 Apple founderSteve Jobs told theWall Street Journal that mobile phone research anddevelopment “used to be about radios and antennas and things likethat…We think, going forward, the phone of the future will bedifferentiated by software.”4 Three years later, Jobs' phone of thefuture is not only differentiated by software, but it has beentransformed by use and widespread adoption. IDC, the marketresearch firm, recently reported that smart phones outsold personalcomputers for the first time in 20115 and, based on sales of mobiledevices and adoption by users, Morgan Stanley now predicts thatmobile computing will be bigger than the desktop equivalent within5 years.6 This represents a tremendous shift to contemplate, especiallyfor libraries with banks of fixed computers workstations in informa-tion or computing commons or dedicated computer labs.

Despite the speed at which smart phones and mobile technologieshave been adopted acrossNorthAmerica, Europe, and parts of Asia andthe developing world, the academic community has been relativelyslow in embracing them.7 The Chronicle of Higher Education's JoshKeller contends that many colleges and universities have not beentaking their mobile sites or applications seriously. As a result they risk“losing prospective applicants and donors through admissions andalumni portals that don'twork, and it risks frustrating current studentswho want to manage their coursework and the rest of their lives withtheir mobile phones.”8 Instead, businesses have taken the lead increating mobile content, and information providers like ElsevierHealth,9 Wiley,10 Cambridge Journals Online,11 LexisNexis,12 World-Cat,13 IEEE14, and Gale15 now offer customers mobile services like websites and applications for specific databases or journals. Two of themost important providers of scholarly content and digital images,JSTOR and ARTStor, have also launchedmobile sites within the past sixmonths.16 What will it mean now that users have access to over1,000,000 high-quality images from libraries, museums, and galleriesfrom around theworld?What newpatterns of use and applicationwillwe see in the comings months? What new opportunities will thiscreate for students, teachers, scholars, and librarians?

Academic libraries are also now in the business of providing mobileaccess to their resources and services. While a 2010 study by Universityof South Dakota professor Alan Aldrich, found that only 24 of 111 ARLlibraries had mobile web sites (i.e., web sites viewable on a smartphone's web browser),17 this number is growing and a quick onlinesearch reveals that the libraries at Duke, Boston College, BrighamYoung,Cornell, Rochester, McGill, British Columbia, MIT, Alberta, Virginia, and

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several of the University of California libraries, amongst others, areadvertising various mobile services and collections.18 Strategic librariesare meeting demand and expectations where they exist. CornellUniversity Library, for example, decided to develop a mobile web sitebased on qualitative and quantitative evidence: data mining revealed a75% increase in thenumberofmobile devices accessing library servers ina semester while library staff also noted an increase in the number ofstudents using smart phones on campus.19 RyersonUniversity Library inToronto began to offer mobile services in spring 2009 and gave users amobile versionof theirwebsite and theability to senda catalog record totheir mobile phones or e-mail. They also asked student users what theywanted in a mobile library site. Based on those responses, (whichincluded the ability to book a room; display hours; check an individualstudent timetable; check a borrower record; search the catalog; andsearch for articles)they reconfigured their site and between September2009 and April 2010, it recorded 3276 unique users. Parts of the site,specifically the student timetable section, received over 10,000 visits.20

Libraries are also seeing how smart phones and mobile devices areinfluencing the larger shift within reference services. In addition tooffering in-person support at the reference desk and phone and instantmessage (IM) assistance, some libraries have also started to advertisereference through text message. Also known as SMS (short messageservice), text reference questions are “more sensitive, contextual, and‘directional’ inways not often seen in other reference channels.”21 Textreference transactions are also, by definition, much shorter, andmessages are usually no more than 160 characters. Google alreadyoffers a similar (and very useful) service to anyonewith a cell phone.22

Early adopters like the University of California, Merced, and BryantUniversity purchased dedicated cell phones for textmessage referenceservice,23 and Dartmouth, CalTech, Florida Atlantic, Kent State,Middlebury, Penn, and University of Nevada, Los Vegas, now offertextmessage reference through a third party service likeMosio's “Texta Librarian”(http://www.textalibrarian.com/), which can be integrat-ed with existing IM reference services and workflows. The number ofquestions received via text message, in comparison to other channels,is still relatively low,24 but demand may grow as teens, who send andreceive an average of 3339 text messages a month, start to populatecollege and university campuses over the coming years.25

QR (quick response) codes present another example of atechnology made possible and accessible through smart phones. QRcodes are two-dimensional barcodes that are readable bymost mobilephones with cameras. The codes can fulfill a variety of uses: they cansend users to a web site, pull up an image, map, event details, or dial aphone number. North Americansmay only be slightly familiarwith QRcodes, but members of ACRL will remember that a QR code appearedon the cover of the November 2010 issue of College& Research LibrariesNews.26 Florida State's law library is using QR codes in the stacks tohelp users locate the electronic version of a printed resource and as away to make their librarians' contact information available to patronsat the swipe of a mobile phone.27 The University of GloucestershireLibrary in theUnitedKingdomhas addedQR codes configuredwith theautomated circulation telephone number in all of their books, makingthe renewal process infinitely easier.28 Other examples include usingQR codes on library instruction session handouts to send students toweb sites, tutorials, or research guides, or to bring up a subjectspecialist's contact information. Vendors and information contentproviders are also increasingly using QR codes: Alexander Street Pressannounced in July 2010 that they are making all of their online musicdatabases accessible via QR code. In a press release, Alexander StreetCEO Stephen Rhind-Tutt was quoted as saying that “QR codes are alsoterrific promotion tools for libraries—as QR codes grow in popularity,they provide an easy, fun way to steer patrons directly into contentthey might not know about otherwise.”29 Users of Alexander Streettools can now also send recordings and playlists to their smart phonesor mobile devices using e-mail or text message.

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Librarians may be asking themselves where to start. Joe Murphy, alibrarian at the Yale science libraries, discussed the notion of “mobileliteracy” in his recent presentation at the Handheld Librarian OnlineConference.30 In this instance, however, librarians, perhaps more thanusers, need the skills to understand and utilize smart phones and newmobile technologies, recognize and analyze trends, and come up withstrategic responses. Time and expertise are not infinite and a decisionto build and manage mobile services needs to be situated within thecontext of users, needs, resources, and other pressures. QuickResponse codes may not be the best use of your own time or that ofyour digital services or information technology librarian dependingon your user community, but building and promoting a mobile site orintegrating mobile tools and collections in instruction sessions maypay more dividends. Many of us also work at institutions where ourusers do not have personal access to sophisticatedmobile devices. Canlibraries, like those at Boston College, Virginia Tech, North CarolinaState, Miami, and Wake Forest, act as a resource to help these userslearn about mobile technologies and improve their own informationtechnology skills by loaning out iPads?31

There are a number of resources available to librarians interestedin creating and supporting mobile applications, resources, andservices. The Handheld Librarian Online Conference (http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/) is now in its fourth year and the peerreviewed Reference Librarian devoted a recent double issue to thesubject of mobile technologies and their uses and applications. Inattempting to understand and measure mobile use on your owncampus, services like Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) or PercentMobile (http://percentmobile.com/) can helpyou collect numbers and view trends, as can user surveys. Qualitativeevidence is also important: have staff helped smart phone users at thereference or circulation desks or have professors noticed an increaseof iPhones, iPads, or Androids in their classrooms? How do ourcolleagues use iPhones or Androids at work or at home? How do thoseof us with iPads use them day-to-day?

Smart phones and new mobile devices and technologies havebroad applications for reference, instruction, access, collectiondevelopment, systems, and technical services librarians, all of whomneed to develop a knowledge of the ways that users and creators andproviders of information are engaging with and responding to them.Some may be thinking that this is yet another bandwagon on whichwe are expected to jump. Use, demand, and increasing technologicaldevelopments indicate otherwise and all signs point to smart phonesandmobile devices becoming cheaper and evenmore pervasive at thesame time as they become easier to personalize. “Search is me andmyinterest,” according to outgoing Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt in akeynote presentation to the World Mobile Conference in February2011.32 R. Bruce Jensen, a librarian at the University of Pennsylvania,Kutztown, cuts to the chase: “Librariansmight not feel an obligation tooffer mobile services, any more than a device called a “telephone” isobliged to do anything besides plug into a wall jack, sit on a desk, andring occasionally. But those doing more will realize greater demandfor what they do.”33

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. Shannon D. Smith and Judith Borreson Caruso, “The ECAR Study ofUndergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2010,”accessed February 12, 2011, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EKF/EKF1006.pdf.

2.Meredith Farkas, “A Library in Your Pocket,” American Libraries 41(July/June 2010): 38.

3. PC Magazine Encyclopedia, “Smartphone,” accessed February 22,2011, http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=smart+phone&i=51537,00.asp.

4. Nick Wingfield, “IPhone Software Sales Take Off,” Wall StreetJournal, August 11, 2008, B1.

5. Sarah Perez, “Smartphones Outsell PCs,” New York Times, February8, 2011, accessed February 20, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2011/02/08/08readwriteweb-smartphones-outsell-pcs-74275.html?partner=rss&emc=rss.

6.Mary Meeker et al., “Internet Trends,” Morgan Stanley, April 12,2010, accessed February 19, 2011, http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/techresearch/pdfs/Internet_Trends_041210.pdf.

7.Meredith Farkas, “A Library in Your Pocket;” Alan W. Aldrich,“Universities and Libraries Move to the Mobile Web,” EDUCAUSEQuarterly33 (2010), accessedFebruary2, 2010, http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/UniversitiesandLibrariesMoveto/206531.

8. Josh Keller, “As theWeb GoesMobile, Colleges Fail to Keep Up,” TheChronicle of Higher Education, January 23, 2011, accessed January29, 2011, http://chronicle.com/article/Colleges-Search-for-Their/126016/.

9. “Elsevier Mobile Apps,” accessed February 11, 2011, http://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/article.jsp?pageid=7739.

10. “Experts to Go,” accessed February 20, 2011, http://ca.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-404142.html.

11. Cambridge Journals, accessed February 3, 2011, http://m.journals.cambridge.org/home.do.

12. “iTunes Preview,” accessed February 22, 2011, http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id336328468?mt=8.

13. “Introducing WorldCat Mobile,” accessed February 3, 2011, http://www.worldcat.org/mobile/default.jsp.

14. “IEEE Xplore Mobile Digital Library,” accessed February 10, 2011,http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/mobile/.

15. “Gale Apps,” accessed February 20, 2011, http://www.gale.cengage.com/apps/.

16. “JSTOR Beta,” accessed February 10, 2011, http://mobile.jstor.org/#_home; “ARTstor Mobile,” accessed February 10, 2011,http://help.artstor.org/wiki/index.php/ARTstor_Mobile.

17. Aldrich.18. For a representative sampling, see: McGill, http://www.mcgill.ca/

library/library-about/lts/mobile/; MIT, http://libraries.mit.edu/mobile-site/; Brigham Young, http://www.lib.byu.edu/m/; Virginia,http://www.lib.byu.edu/m/; Rochester, http://www.lib.rochester.edu/m/; and British Columbia, http://www.library.ubc.ca/m/index.php.

19.Matthew Connolly, et al., “Mobilizing the Library's Web Presenceand Services: A Student-Library Collaboration to Create the

Library's Mobile Site and iPhone Application,” The ReferenceLibrarian 52 (2011): 28.

20. Sally Wilson, “Library Services to Mobile Students,” (Presentationat the TRY Libraries Conference, Toronto, April 27, 2010) accessedFebruary 18, 2011, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/event/staffconference/2010/mobile-students-presentation.pdf.

21. ThomasA. Peters, “Left to theirOwnDevices: The Future of ReferenceServices on Personal, Portable Information, Communication, andEntertainment Devices,” The Reference Librarian 52 (2011): 88.

22. “Google Mobile,” accessed February 24, 2011, http://www.google.ca/mobile/sms/index.html.

23. Keith Weimar, “Text Messaging the Reference Desk: Using UpsideWireless' SMS-to-Email to Extend Reference Service,” The Refer-ence Librarian 51 (2010): 110.

24.Weimar, 121.25. Katherine Rosman, “Y U Luv Texts, H8 Calls,” Wall Street Journal,

October 14, 2010, D1.26.College & Research Libraries News, “About the Cover, November

2010,” accessed February 10, 2011, http://crln.acrl.org/content/71/10.cover-expansion.

27. DarlaW. Jackson, “Standard Bar Codes Beware—Smartphone UsersMay Prefer QR Codes,” Law Library Journal 103 (2011): 153.

28. EDUCAUSE, “7 Things You Should Know About QR Codes,”accessed 23 February, 2011, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7046.pdf.

29. “Alexander Street Streaming Music Collections to Go Mobile:Easy Access Options Include QR Codes,” July 15, 2010, accessedFebruary 18, 2011, http://alexanderstreet.com/pressroom/releases/10.0715.mobile.htm.

30. Joe Murphy, “Next Trends in Mobile Technology,” (Presentation atthe Handheld Librarian Online Conference, February 23, 2011)accessed February 24, http://www.slideshare.net/joseph.murphy/next-mobile-trends-hhlib.

31. For example, see: “iPads for Loan in Carpenter Library,” http://www.wfubmc.edu/Library/Resources/iPads-for-Loan-in-Carpenter-Library.htm, accessed February 25, 2011.

32. Jenna Wortham, “Eric Schmidt Predicts a Smartphone-FueledFuture,” New York Times, February 15, 2011, accessed February 19,2011, http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/eric-schmidt-predicts-a-smartphone-fueled-future/?ref=googleinc.

33. R. Bruce Jensen, “Optimizing Library Content for Mobile Phones,”Library Hi Tech News 27 (2010): 9.

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