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*** Apologies for Receipt of Duplicate Postings ***

Colleagues/

In addition to my current obsession [:-)] with Digital Textbooks

[ http://digital-textbooks.blogspot.com/ ],

I've been actively involved in surveying publisher and vendor initiatives with regard to a Mobile Presence, as well as documenting The App Phenomena:

The Seventh > New Column > The Mobile Lucky Seven: A Brief Summary, Searcher v. 19 no. 6 (July/August 2011) pp. 16-21, 52-53.

Profiles > Alexander Street Press / American Chemical Society / Cengage Learning /  EBSCO Publishing /  Infotrieve /  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)  / NewspaperDirect, Inc.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2011/10/library-mobile-mobile-lucky-seven-new.html

The Sixth > New Column > Configuring The 'Future Textbook', Searcher v. 19 no. 3 (April 2011) p. 43-47.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2011/06/library-mobile-6-configuring-future.html

The Fifth > New Column > Abilene Christian University: An Exemplar Mobile University, Searcher v. 19 no. 3 (April 2011) p. 34-37.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2011/06/library-mobile-5-abilene-christian.html

The Fourth > New Column > 'B' is for 'BlackBerry' > Searcher v. 18 no. 10 (December 2010): 50-53.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2011/06/library-mobile-4-b-is-for-blackberry.html

The Third > New Column > 'A' Is for 'Android' > Searcher v. 18 no. 7 (September 2010) p. 7-11.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2010/10/library-mobile-3-is-for-android.html

The Second > New Column > 'A' Is for 'Apple' and 'App' > Searcher v. 18 no. 5 (June 2010) p. 32-6.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2010/07/library-mobile-2-is-for-apple-and-app.html

The First > New Column > Library Mobile > Worldwide Mobile Phone Adoption and Libraries > Searcher v. 18 no. 3 (April 2010) p. 48-51.

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/2010/07/library-mobile-1-worldwide-mobile-phone.html

BTW: The Eighth will be published later this Spring and profiles a Mobile Handful of additional publishers with a Mobile Presence  (BioOne / Elsevier / Emerald  / Royal Society of Chemistry / Springer) 

And I start work on The Ninth by April 1 ... Candidate publishers / vendors include JSTOR / Lexis-Nexis Academic /  Naxos / ProQuest / Sage Journals / Web of Knowledge [Sciences].

BTW: I've noticed that as more vendors begin to offer mobile access to their e-resources, an increasing number of libraries are publishing Mobile LibGuides

[A Google search will retrieve quite a number ... ].

Enjoy !!!

/Gerry

Gerry McKiernan
Associate Professor
and
Science and Technology Librarian
Iowa State University
152 Parks Library
Ames IA 50011

http://mobile-libraries.blogspot.com/

________________________________________
From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information Community [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Chris Keene [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 29, 2012 7:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [lis-e-resources] Electronic resource apps

Hi Sarah

Good question. What are we doing at the moment, nout.

I really like the Libguide pages Newcastle have developed, and Moira just mentioned. They highlight what is out there, alongside other services/facilities related to mobile. I would imagine at some point

Some back-of-an-envelope thoughts...
I think your typical undergrad will be more interested in an app that searches all content they have access to, not specific collections/resources. Though there may be subject/content-type exceptions. With this in mind, apps associated with Resource Discovery services (Summon, Primo, EDS, Worldcat, etc) could be much more useful.

If they are working on an essay, they probably already have a laptop open, and hence this will be their access to online content. Our stats (to our own sites) suggest iPads and iPhones are by far the most popular devices, with Android devices some way behind. I suspect the iPhone (and other phone sized devices) will be adevice of last resort only used for consuming academic content if no other device is to hand.

When it comes to Use Cases, I think they separate between tablets and mobiles. People are increasingly doing more and more on tablets (especially the iPad). But what advantages will an App have over a webpage? And if using an App, I wonder if interoperability with other Apps is key, i.e. it's not much use to find a highly relevant article, if you can't save it to your bibliographic library (Zotero, Mendeley, Refworks), or easily cite it within your Word processing app.

For mobiles, it seems more limited, I guess someone on a train/coffee shop (with no laptop) planning an essay/research will find it useful to search and read content. Bedtime reading perhaps? I can't help but feel services such as http://www.instapaper.com/ might be more useful here. (allows you to flag an article for reading on your computer, and read it later) However it's no good for publisher/content sites which only provide PDFs (which is another reason why you shouldn't only provide PDF as a format!).

Which is a very long way of saying that while we need to keep abreast of mobile developments, and show our users that we are, I'm not convinced of how useful these apps will be for the majority of uses, especially regarding phone sized devices. However for the long tail of different types of user/content/needs they may highly useful.

I've got no evidence to hand of the above, so feel free to add [citation needed] liberally throughout.

Finally, a reminder that Serials recently had a special issue on Mobile Technology
http://uksg.metapress.com/content/u3k72x4ulx70/

Chris

Chris Keene
Technical Development Manager, University of Sussex Library
Contact: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/150000


> -----Original Message-----
> From: An informal open list set up by UKSG - Connecting the Information
> Community [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Taylor,
> Sarah
> Sent: 29 March 2012 11:39
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [lis-e-resources] Electronic resource apps
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> With more electronic resources launching apps, I was just wondering if
> any of you are actively promoting/publicising them to your users? If so,
> how, and if not, why not? I've got my own thoughts on the matter, but
> wondered what others were doing.
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
>
> Sarah
>
>
>
>
>
> Sarah Taylor
>
> Electronic Resources Librarian
>
> The Peter Marsh Library
>
> University of Bolton
>
> Deane Road
>
> Bolton
>
> BL3 5AB
>
>
>
> 01204 903099
>
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Please note that my normal working days are Mondays, Tuesdays and
> Thursdays
>
>
>
>
> lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
> UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn

lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn
lis-e-resources is a UKSG list - http://www.uksg.org/serials
UKSG groups also available on Facebook and LinkedIn