M‐libraries 2: A Virtual Library in Everyone's Pocket

Citation

Weaver, J. (2011), "M‐libraries 2: A Virtual Library in Everyone's Pocket", Library Management, Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 230-231. https://doi.org/10.1108/01435121111112943

This book, like the preceding volume M‐Libraries: Libraries on the Move to Provide Virtual Access, is based on the International M‐Libraries Conference that has held two successful meetings in Canada and is planning a third next year in Brisbane. Whereas the first volume reflected much of the excitement that librarians were experiencing for the potential as mobile technology became more ubiquitous, this volume is more focused on getting down to the business and activity of developing and utilising mobile technology to best advantage for libraries and their users as the technology continues to rapidly develop.

When considering the information in this publication, it is important to keep in mind that the global ubiquity of mobile phones sits in direct contrast to the cost of their use, however it is becoming steadily cheaper for users to stay connected.

Related to this is the difference in use between the developing and developed worlds – as Sir John Daniel notes in the Foreword, it is important to consider the implications of global trends, and he discusses this in relation to the idea of a developing global education commons.

Although there is no research to this effect yet, the advent of mobile devices must have been and will continue to be a strong contributing factor to the rise of shared, free education. Initiators who focused on mobile technology were those, like the Open University, for whom the provision of flexible education is a priority, but all education organisations today need to be aware of the potential of providing flexible resources to mobile or nomadic users. The broader picture implies that education in its widest sense is inherent in many activities including commerce and industry, and Ally's comments lead one to suspect that for libraries and their services to sit alongside (but not part of) these activities will lead to exclusion because of users' preferences. Thus, there is right now a huge potential for libraries to become more integrated into daily life, and much work needs to be done to achieve this. Chapter 6, for example, describes a collaborative project between the University of Limerick and the University of Plovdiv to develop a service architecture model that can support expansion of library services into the mobile domain; importantly, this project allocates for the potential to provide increasingly contextualised services, and for users to have much more control over their interactions with those services.

Another strong theme lies in the challenges of the technology, especially the disparity of operating and other software currently required to operate mobile devices. This is compounded by the trend for mobile devices to be multi‐purpose (you can communicate using a mobile phone to talk, text or write, to connect to the internet, to take photos, as a GPS and so on). Part 2: Technology in M‐Libraries, describes many useful developments in system architectures, bibliographic ontologies, and automatic device detection and reformat software. A trend to watch is the development of e‐readings provision on mobile devices. Chapter 4 describes a plan by the Open University of Catalonia to loan e‐book readers preloaded with e‐readings; Chapter 11 describes how Athabasca University is providing e‐reading files (including audio and video), in mobile format ready for download.

Parts 3 and 4 are divided between applications of the technology in libraries and learning, describing projects that include roaming reference, health literacy, podcasting, blended learning, and information literacy.

Included for the first time is a section (part 5) introducing research topics in the field, and it is to be hoped this segment will continue in the forthcoming conference. In addition, several institutions report collecting data that reflects developments around the world, reflecting mobile adoption plans at some libraries, or trials suggesting readiness to adopt in others.

For a librarian, such as myself, who intuits that mobile access to information will continue to grow across a broad range of user groups (including gender‐socioeconomic‐demographic or geographically defined), this volume can be added to an exciting and growing reference library of information on the topic of mobile technology and information access.