Interest blog post: Doctor’s Going Digital

[Xiaomei Gu]

Hello!

My name is Xiaomei Gu. I'm currently working in a non-medical library, but I am hoping to go back to to a medical library. I appreciate the opportunity to take this
course, and I'm excited to learn from the course materials and the discussion. And I have recently purchase my first mobile device, iPad 2!

Today I'm sharing with you all a blog post from Krafty Librarian, Doctor’s Going Digital.

Since I'm also in charge of the website in my current library, I'm curious if any efforts have been made in your library in terms of making website contents and e-resources more mobile friendly. 

Best,
Xiaomei

[Molly K]

>I'm curious
> if any efforts have been made in your library in terms of making website
> contents and e-resources more mobile friendly.

Here at LSUHSC-New Orleans we made a very simple "mobile friendly"
page for smaller screens in simple html (which is about all we know
here in terms of web development):
http://www.lsuhsc.edu/no/library/mobile/mobile.html

Krafty Librarian has useful tips and links on taking your lib website
mobile here:
http://kraftylibrarian.com/?p=946

From other comments, having a resource guide/lib guide/pathfinder to
your mobile resources is another thing to do.

I think making e-resources mobile-friendly is a little trickier,
because many times libraries have to rely on a vendor to create the
mobile version of their specialty product. Nature.com was promoting
their native iOs reader app heavily at the 2011 ALA conference, but
according to the literature I received, it doesn't allow access to
site-licensed content. So if you are trying to read a Nature article
on your iPad & you get access through your library, you'd still have
to authenticate through your institution (ie: go to library homepage,
browse to journal, authenticate, browse to article, etc etc). I think
we will continue to experience a lot of fragmentation in mobile app
development and usability for licensed products. The focus is on the
individual in app development right now.

Another interesting thing to think about regarding mobile e-resources
is their usefulness on a small screen site. For example, RefWorks is
a bibliographic management system similar to Endnote that has rolled
out a mobile version. When I mention to patrons that they provide a
mobile web app, they are like, "wow, cool", but the next question is
almost always, "But when will I realistically need to save a reference
and format a bibliography on my phone?" The same can be said for
EbscoHost's mobile platform. Sure it's great, but who buckles down for
a hard literature search on their Droid? It will be interesting to see
how this changes as people become more acclimated to working in small-
screen environments.

On Jul 29, 11:15 am, Xiaomei Gu <xmgu....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello!
>
> My name is Xiaomei Gu. I'm currently working in a non-medical library, but I
> am hoping to go back to to a medical library. I appreciate the opportunity
> to take this
> course, and I'm excited to learn from the course materials and the
> discussion. And I have recently purchase my first mobile device, iPad 2!
>
> Today I'm sharing with you all a blog post from Krafty Librarian, Doctor’s

> Going Digital. <http://kraftylibrarian.com/?p=1283>

[Marilyn Dow]

Molly

Thanks for posting the link to your library's mobile page.  Simple, yes, but useful.  And I never thought to access RefWorks on a mobile device.  I recently started using it for collection development where I keep folders for each subject area that I purchase materials for;  having access on my smartphone is even better.  And I just decided that this will be a great way to keep a list of books that I'm looking for at libraries for my own reading.  Will WorldCat mobile do an export to RefWorks?  Gotta go try that!

Marilyn Dow

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[Gussun Gunes]

Dear Molly and All,

Last week I tried to set some apps for library Ipad's and saw that not many databases are on App Store.

If we create our own library application  can  we  solve the access problem.  What do you think?  For  the library apps do you  have any recommendations? any technical things? software?  

Greetings from Istanbul,

Gussun Gunes

2011/8/1 Molly K <unchien...@gmail.com>

[Luke Rosenberger]

I'll also add here the mobile site for the UT Health Science Center at San Antonio Libraries:

http://uthscsa.mobi/library/

We're planning to do more with it, but it's a start.

Luke

[Marilyn Dow]

Luke

Thanks for posting the link to your mobile site; looks nice.   I didn't see a link to your library catalog.  As we've been going thru an upgrade lately with our ILS, I'm wondering how much patrons actually use it.  How did  you decide what to include on the mobile site?

Marilyn Dow

--

[Luke Rosenberger]

We do not yet have a mobile version of our library website, although we're fixing that shortly.  We tested LibraryAnywhere, but we ended up going ahead and puchasing AirPac from Innovative Interfaces (our ILS vendor).  We will be implementing it over the next few months, and once it's ready it will be linked from our mobile site.

Initially, we wanted to keep the mobile site small, tight and focused on (a) content that we could make available in a mobile-optimized format, and (b) content we felt patrons would find most useful from a mobile device (i.e. when away from a desktop machine).  

However, another change coming within the next year is that we are currently transitioning our main website so it will run on WordPress as its content management system.  As part of that transition, we will be implementing mobile-optimized templates for WordPress, so that we'll be able to offer any or all of the library website in a mobile-friendly interface.  I can give you more information on that if you're interested.

Luke

[Alisha764]

I am interested to learn more about your project.

Unfortunately our library website is behind firewalls. There is no way
to log in on a mobile phone due to the firewalls. Instead I have
created a list of appspot on our website that you can access via a
mobile phone and I included websites the library subscribes to &
allows patrons to create their own account.

For instance Clin-eguide allows our patrons to create their own
account to access the resource remotely. This way they do not have to
go through the firewalls, which they cannot on a mobile yet.

I would be interested in hearing from other hospital librarians with
firewall issues how you offer mobile access of library resources.

~Alisha

BTW, Google Groups is not a mobile friendly website. Perhaps Google
should look at converting to Wordpress ;) j/k

> However, another change coming within the next year is that we are currently
> transitioning our main website so it will ru

> mobile-optimized templates for WordPress, so that we'll be able to offer *any
> or all* of the library website in a mobile-friendly interface.  I can give

[Luke Rosenberger]

FYI, Alisha -- if you go to http://groups.google.com in your mobile browser (instead of using the link on the class page), you should see a mobile-friendly interface for Google Groups.  That update is mentioned in this article from the Google Apps blog: http://googleappsposts.blogspot.com/2010/12/preview-new-google-groups.html

Luke