1. NISO Webinar:
Knowledge in Your Pocket:
Mobile Technology and Libraries
October 9, 2013
Speakers:
Terry Ballard - Special Projects Librarian at the College of New Rochelle
Rachel Besara - Assistant Librarian, Strozier Library,
Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida
Anne K. Seymour -Associate Director, Biomedical Library, University of Pennsylvania
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/webinars/mobile

2. Libraries on the Run: Adding
Mobile Access to Academic
Libraries
Terry Ballard
Special Projects Librarian
Gill Library, College of New Rochelle

3. Starting with the big question
• Why do we need this?
• At the New York Law School, I was the
Assistant Director of Technical Services for
library systems. I felt that the patrons were
already well served with our classic catalog
and Encore discovery service.

4. There’s an app for that
• In April 2011 I attended the Innovative Users
Group conference in San Francisco. The
keynote speaker was Thomas Frey, director of
the Da Vinci Institute. He spoke of the
emerging technological meta-trends facing
libraries. The most important was the fact that
mobile technologies are taking a greater share
of the information market, and the
information world was being swamped by free
or nearly free apps.

5. I came away a believer
• At future automation meetings, we discussed
the feasibility of creating a mobile app. The
first step was to get a look at our peer group.
Sadly, we found that no other law school
library was listed in the iTunes or the Android
store. For law school libraries, we would have
to be the pioneers.

6. Which vendor?
• We knew that we wanted our app to be
available in the major online stores, so I went
in to the iTunes and Android stores and
searched ‘Library.’ At the time there were
surprisingly few hits. About half of the
libraries were public or small academic
libraries with homemade systems. The name
that came up most frequently for a vendor
was Boopsie. We began to contact them.

7. Checking their past work
• Boopsie had done mobile apps for other
libraries using Innovative Interfaces, so we
began paying attention to these as the
negotiations progressed. Everything looked
good except for one thing – none of the
Boopsie/III libraries had an app setting for
course reserves. This feature was very
important for NYLS, so we had to work out
some way to create it for the app.

8. Book Expo
• While attending the 2011 BookExpo in New
York, I happened to spot a pair of librarians
from a library that had purchased Boopsie. I
asked them about their experience and the
answer was all I needed to give the company a
full recommendation to the committee.

9. Feeding the catalog
• The catalog interface was set up by Boopsie.
They worked from a text file with the names
of all titles in the catalog. Once a query turned
up a match, the system went from there to a
visit to the catalog to retrieve information
such as current status. To do this, we had to
send them a complete file of marc records
every few weeks.

10. Other channels
Librarians worked with Boopsie to set up the
other channels such as library hours and
announcements. This was done by working in
a shared Google Documents account. One
channel that gave us a particular problem was
the one for DRAGNET, a Google Custom
Search created by the library to track the most
important free legal resources on the web.

11. Making DRAGNET work
• We found out that a smooth display of
DRAGNET was our problem to solve. It turned
out that I was visiting the GooglePlex at about
this time, and got the help I needed to set up
a mobile display of our Google Custom Search
pages.

12. When the nyls.boopsie.com page is visited
by a device, it automatically passes you to
the correct store.

13. Autodetect
• Our librarians wanted users who went to our
catalog address using a mobile device to be
directed to a web-enabled page automatically.
Boopsie had already created the page for us,
but we had to located code to add to the
header of our catalog that made the switch.

14. Getting the word out
• In the late summer of 2011 we began a
campaign to let the users know that mobile
had arrived at the library. There were posters,
flyers and even QR codes in the elevators.
• On the official launch day, the librarians
gathered at the reference desk for a group
shot holdings their cell phones.

15. Mobile-enabled catalog

16. Issues with a student
• One student signed up for the app, but was
concerned about the permissions being
granted to make it work, such as location. This
was investigated for several days until we
found that this is the standard procedure for
every app in the world. The student thought it
was fine to grant these permissions to a
corporation, but balked at giving them to a
library.

17. Launch day!

18. Announcement
• At the time, we announced that we were the
first law school in America with a full service
mobile app. This was backed up by searches in
the iTunes store and the Android store. Also,
nobody spoke up to dispute that claim.

19. Usage
• The first month’s usage data showed that
quite a few users had loaded and used the
app. The big question was whether it would
be used heavily after the initial excitement. By
the time I retired in August 2012, it was clear
that the product had legs. There was
substantial usage, even during the summer.

20. College of New Rochelle
• Shortly after I retired from full time library
work I was invited to work part-time at the
College of New Rochelle Gill library on various
special projects. One of the early suggestions I
made was to look into mobile access. The
college itself did not have an app, so we would
be on our own.

22. Factors in choosing a vendor
• Cost was a major consideration in this
purchase. Boopsie was costlier than some of
the other services, so we looked further. One
service was extremely affordable, but they
provided mobile access to the catalog rather
than a full app. LibraryThing had a mobile app
that was well-regarded by people I knew, and
it was relatively affordable.

23. Setup
• As with Boopsie, the company did the major
job, which was to create a mobile catalog
interface. In this case, the provisional app was
available for viewing within a day or two after
signing the contract. I was given the job of
adding the rest of the features such as news
events, branch information and links to our
LibGuides. We’d already created branch
information pages in the catalog, so we were
able to adapt these to the mobile app.

25. We were given a form to fill out to
complete the details of the extra links

26. Rollout of the app has been gradual
• We have begun to mention it at bibliographic
instruction sessions
• We added a link to the web page
• It was announced at a general faculty/staff
meeting.

27. Another difference
• LibraryAnywhere requires an app that can be
found in Android or iTunes. Once you load
that, you browse locations to find your library
– CNR is not listed directly in the mobile
stores.

28. Initial response
• Students and faculty have been very receptive
to this new offering. There have been
occasional access glitches – particularly when
it app is used on-campus. Our IT department
has been very helpful in fielding these
questions.

29. Contact information
• Terry Ballard, Special Projects Librarian
• Gill Library, College of New Rochelle
• tballard@cnr.edu
• Further information found in the book
“Google this: Putting Google and other social
media sites to work for your library.”
• See http://googlethis.com

30. Questions?

31. Using Mobile Technology for
Assessment, Data Visualization, and
Advocacy
Rachel Besara
Assessment Librarian
Florida State University

32. Assessment
http://www.flickr.com/photos/falcifer/3136673599/

33. Assessment:
Quantitative

34. Assessment:
Quantitative

35. Assessment:
Quantitative

36. Assessment:
Quantitative

37. Assessment:
Qualitative

38. Assessment:
Qualitative

39. Assessment:
Qualitative

40. Assessment:
Qualitative

41. Data Visualization
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindes/

42. Data Visualization:
Quantitative – Business Analytics
Roambi
Analytics
QlikView
MicroStrateg

43. Data Visualization:
Quantitative
Roambi Analytics

44. Data Visualization:
Quantitative
Roambi Analytics
Library STEM Population Survey Results

45. Data Visualization:
Quantitative
Roambi Analytics

46. Data Visualization:
Qualitative
Popplet

47. Data Visualization:
Qualitative
Popplet

48. Advocacy
http://www.exeter.edu/academics/news_events_14285.aspx

49. Advocacy:
Quantitative
Roambi Flow

50. Advocacy:
Qualitative
Popplet

51. Advocacy:
Qualitative
Evernote

52. Conclusion
• Assessment
• Data Visualization
• Advocacy

53. Thank you!
Rachel Besara – rbesara@fsu.edu
Apps
• Tally Counter Pro – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tally-counter-pro/id432022382?mt=8
• Decibel Meter Pro – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/decibel-meter-pro/id382776256?mt=8
• QuickTapSurvey – http://www.quicktapsurvey.com/
• TouchPoint – http://opinionmeter.com/
• SUMA – http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/spaceassesstool
• Sketchbook Pro – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sketchbook-pro-for-ipad/id364253478?mt=8
• ATLAS.ti – http://www.atlasti.com/ipad.html
• QulikView – http://www.qlikview.com/
• Roambi Analytics & Flow – http://www.roambi.com/
• MicroStrategy - http://www.microstrategy.com/
• Corckulous – https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/corkulous-pro/id367779315?mt=8
• Poplet – http://popplet.com/
• Evernote – https://evernote.com/
Articles
• Besara, R. M. (2012) “Apps for Assessment: A Starting Point.” The Reference Librarian, 53(3), 304-309.
• Besara, R. M. (2012) “Using Mobile Tools for Advocacy.” The Reference Librarian, 53(3), 297-303.

54. mHealth and mLearning:
Global and Local Initiatives
Informing Mobile Strategy at Penn
Libraries
Anne K. Seymour
University of Pennsylvania • Biomedical Library
October 9, 2013

55. Penn & Penn Libraries in
Botswana

56. Medical Information Needs
Assessment: Key findings
 Cell phones ubiquitous
 Excellent cellular
infrastructure
 Lack of access to information
in clinical settings
 Potential for mobile
technology
 Leapfrog over non-digital
information

57. Early mobile/mHealth
initiatives
 Key partnership with Penn
leader in mobile telemedicine
 Intern from UB Library to
Penn for 6 months
 NLM funding for installation
and testing of text2medline
(SMS queries of Medline),
expanded to clinical
guidelines
 Penn & CHOP led IT audit of
UB SOM
Photos courtesy of Ryan Littman Quinn

58. Smartphone pilot
Photos courtesy of Ryan Littman Quinn

59. Scale up of mLearning Project
Photos courtesy of Ryan Littman Quinn

60. Research in mLearning
Outcomes
“Evaluation of generic medical
information accessed via mobile
phones at the point of care in
resource-limited settings”
Journal of the American Medical
Informatics Association
March 2013

61. Other factors influencing mobile
strategy
 Users & early adopters at
Penn, UPHS
 Medical apps and mobilized
websites
 Health sciences content in
mobile format
 Wireless

62. What we learned and applied
 Freedom to go right to digital,
not trapped and weighed down
by older systems
 Resource-limited settings:
have to be creative
 Developing interfaces
 ask the right questions
 keep it simple
 Don't put limited resources to
developing apps
 Piggy back on other projects

63. What we learned and applied
 Evaluating and licensing
apps
 Importance of access to
information when not
connected
 Beyond the device or Bring
Your Own Device (BYOD):
focus on resources and
services, not device
 How to fix phones dropped in
water

64. Latest initiatives
 iPad initiative in Perelman
School of Medicine
 Hackathons: Hack the
Change
 Health informatics training in
Botswana
 Introducing mLearning in
Guatemala

65. Thank you!
seymoura@upenn.edu

66. NISO Webinar • October 9, 2013
Questions?
All questions will be posted with presenter answers on
the NISO website following the webinar:
http://www.niso.org/news/events/2013/webinars/mobile
NISO Webinar:
Knowledge in Your Pocket:
Mobile Technology and Libraries

67. Thank you for joining us today.
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