Despite advocating for neutral design (not tied to one particular platform or device), I have been interested in libraries that are looking at iPhone/Touch/Pre applications to provide catalogue searching, collection information and so on. What I would love to see is a general library app that helps librarians and users find and access libraries all over. As anyone who uses public libraries knows, that information can get buried on council and municipality sites, and even academic libraries have found that their homepage links have been disappearing in increasing numbers.
What could such an app include?
- Maps of all publicly accessible libraries near you (location aware) and at a given location worldwide
- Information about access – can you use the Internet without a membership card? Are there access gates? Are books on open access shelves?
- Are there local traveller services? One thing that has always struck me in all of my travels is how few libraries make available information about the local area in a prominent spot. So often I have had to be buried in the collection to find street directories, local maps or local travel guides, or ask at the reference desk for the librarian’s copy. It has always seemed like an obvious and easy service that libraries could provide since they have the resources already and because libraries are so often located in key areas in cities and towns.
What else would you be interested in?
Something along those lines if you Text LIBRARY 12345 to 41411 (if your ZIP code is 12345) you will get a text with the name, address, and phone number of the nearest library. Not very visual but handy, maybe something to build on.
That sounds great David, definitely something that could be extended internationally.
i’m all for device / platform agnostic design, too, but i’m a bit intrigued about apps and their proliferation. not being an iphone user, i have to admit that some apps i hear people rave about have me a bit mystified, because they seem to do a lot of stuff that you could simply do online – stuff that lots of people already do online. i suspect i’m missing something (and maybe i’m just missing out!) but are apps just a wee bit gimmicky?
at any rate, where i see apps working well is with aggregating access to the kind of data you’re talking about – filling gaps where there aren’t existing web-based services that could easily be accessed from a smart phone. how nice would it be to have a super catalogue that takes location-awareness to the next level by only showing you items available on the shelf in a library within a certain distance from your current location?
You make a good point Kate. For me, a lot of the apps are just new interfaces for websites that I use regularly – like Twitter, Facebook, and RSS apps to read Ask Metafilter. If the phones were better at offline caching, I wouldn’t need all these separate applications. As it is, I click on each application, get the latest updates, disconnect and head out. That too, is inefficient since you can’t update all apps at once, you have to select each one individually. When I only had my smartphone (a Nokia E65, which I still have) I didn’t like any of the apps on that platform. I really only used the browser to access, you guessed it, all the sites that I now have separate apps for on my iPod.
With you on the super catalogue idea. Or how about ‘books you’d like’ near you on the shelf, based on your music collection and ebooks on your iPod? A step too far perhaps, but could be fun.
ooh, i like it! i wonder what influence my (very eclectic) music collection would have on book suggestions? could be interesting.
Worldcat is no so very different from what you describe.
Jerilyn – I use Worldcat a lot. But it has many limitations. I use it to get to a very vague first level of holdings, but beyond that I go to individual catalogues, or Copac. Probably the most confusing thing for me is how the location search works. Worldcat attempts to list by postcode first, but interprets it incorrectly for the UK. Locations in Australia are also strangely formatted. If Worldcat could fix the location search and bring access information into Worldcat (at the moment you have to click out to the library’s site and read through regulations there) that would be great.