How not to communicate in the 21st century (image c/o Stefan on Flickr)
A little while back I was asked by a colleague if I would be willing to present at the Ex Libris Product User Group conference at the British Library on the 11th October. I have fairly limited experience in public speaking (I try to avoid it where I can to be honest) but I thought why not just throw myself in at the deep end and do it. Besides which the topic, using social media and mobile devices to improve access to resources, is one in which I have always had a particular interest having been quite involved in using social media to drive awareness of Voices for the Library.
The completed presentation can be viewed here:
One of the interesting things I came across when researching the content for the presentation was the use of Metalib and SFX to create a user friendly mobile interface. The interface itself was put together by the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI). You can find out more about their mobile website here. Personally I thought it was a beautifully put together mobile site. It looked good and, having played around with it, it seemed very user friendly. The only thing I did wonder about was whether I would actually search for resources in this way.
The problem with smartphones is that whilst they are pretty handy for a number of internet-related functions, they’re not very user-friendly when it comes to reading PDFs. It is do-able, of course, but I certainly would not (and do not) feel comfortable reading from a small screen at the best of times, let alone when it is a journal article. I rarely, if ever, read books on my phone. I tend to use it to read articles on dedicated interfaces (or apps like The Guardian’s) but couldn’t imagine reading at any great length of time.
That doesn’t mean to say that smartphones cannot have their uses in conducting research. It would be very useful if, for example, you were able to search for an article, bookmark it and have it ready for you to read as soon as you sit at your computer and open a web browser. If you could ‘favourite’ an article on your phone that would then sync across all your devices I would find that very useful indeed. No more repeat searches, just login and a list of favourites would be there waiting for you.
That said, with the growth of tablets, PDFs will suddenly become much easier to access and read whilst on the go. You could comfortably read straight from the device without having to refer to your laptop or desktop at a later date (or perhaps even avoid the need to print out the entire article). But this got me wondering. With the growth of tablets will it no longer be necessary to develop mobile websites for certain services? Would you need a mobile interface to access online resources if the site can be easily accessed and viewed on a tablet? Or do tablets require an equivalent to the mobile website?
I asked just that thing a couple of days after the event and received mixed responses. Some said they preferred accessing the mobile site on their tablet, others said that they just viewed the page as if they were sitting in front of their main computer or netbook. I don’t have a tablet so I have no idea whether I would find ‘normal’ browsing satisfactory on a tablet or whether I would prefer some dedicated interface as you would expect on a smartphone.
So, will the rise of tablets mean we no longer need to create user-friendly versions of library interfaces and that the issue of providing easy access to online resources on a mobile device has been solved? Or will this even drive libraries to more seriously consider ‘apps’ as an alternative? What will the future of mobile resource discovery look like?