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The purpose of this paper is to get an insight in users’ opinion on library resources/services on small screen mobile devices. Objectives were to establish which types of small screen mobile devices are used and to find out is there a tendency for using academic and educational contents on such devices. Furthermore, aim was to identify whether the users need mobile friendly library web site and services at all. Also, what library resources/services and to what extent respondents consider as the important ones for mobile friendly customization. Finally the results would serve as an orientation in building mobile friendly library web site and services. The author believed that the users were still unaware of the possibility of accessing library web sites and services through mobile devices in general; therefore, this survey also had a role of raising awareness and stimulating their interest.

The survey was focussed on small screen mobile devices with screen size up to seven inches (17.1 cm). Data collection was performed through a questionnaire containing ten questions. The questionnaire was created by LimeSurvey tool, and for mobile optimized version SurveyMonkey.com service was used too. The authors received 295 questionnaires, out of which 285 were taken into account.

The survey found that the largest number of respondents own smartphone/tablet/phablet. The results show that small screen devices are, to some extent, used for educational, academic and informational purposes (reading of e-books and e-journals, education, data checking, internet searching and searching of handy information), but non-academic purposes still predominate (texting, reading e-mails, phone calls, taking pictures). Overall 64 percent of the respondents has expressed need for small screen mobile devices customized library resources/services, but there are 30 percent of undecided respondents. Croatian Scientific Bibliography, e-journals database (EZB), online databases, contact information and lecture halls reservations, has been resources/services requested by respondents to be available in a mobile friendly mode.

The survey examines users’ opinion on a new library service before its implementation. Besides giving us a precise insight into the Rudjer Bošković Institute library users’ interest and needs for mobile friendly customization of existing library resource/service, survey gives a unique insight into the correlation of age and gender of the respondents and their answers to the question about having a small screen mobile device and opinion about the customization of library resources and services. To the author’s knowledge, this is the first users’ survey on this topic in Croatia.

Student dropout rates have been a source of contention throughout many Universities worldwide. Universities recognize this fact and many have acted to improve their induction process for students joining the University in the first year. However, student dropout rates continue to be higher than acceptable and it is in this context that this project has been undertaken. However, quite often there is no additional support provided to overseas students arriving on the campus. Frequently, these students are taken into final year and miss all the inductions aimed at year 1 students. The purpose of this research is to investigate the feasibility of designing an information portal in the Chinese language to assist new arrivals on campus.

The authors started with the premise that any additional information that can make life easier for these foreign language students is to be welcomed. Mobile communications is a continually growing sector in industry and a wide variety of visual services such as video‐on‐demand have been created which are limited by low‐bandwidth network infrastructures. The distinction between mobile phones and personal device assistants has already become blurred with pervasive computing being the term coined to describe the tendency to integrate computing and communication into everyday life.

The authors believe that placing location based campus information on a mobile device outlining key information concerning the University of Ulster at the Magee campus in the Chinese language will assist overseas students greatly in the crucial early days of arrival at the University.

This paper outlines the unique implementation of a multilingual Chinese–English Campus information portal for mobile devices which assists fresh arrivals in locating important information about the university. The research finds that students are assisted by mobile portals created in their native language directing them to important sources of information on campus.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the current habits of distance learners in higher education (HE) regarding information access and mobile device use, and their attitudes for future changes to their habits.

Distance learning students were surveyed to determine their information access habits, mobile device use, and attitudes towards future changes. A survey was e‐mailed to approximately 1,500 distance learners at Robert Gordon University (Aberdeen) as well as an online survey being publicised in the student newsletter, which all students receive. Four weeks were allowed for responses and the survey was highlighted in the newsletter a week after being e‐mailed; 62 responses were received.

While books and journals were accessed primarily in print, respondents wanted to use them electronically in future; all other learning materials were already available electronically. Laptops and desktops are the main devices for accessing information and, despite most respondents owning a mobile phone and almost half having an mp3 player, remarkably few respondents expressed a desire to use other mobile devices in the future. Reasons range from technological specifications to compatibility of material; furthermore, almost half of respondents have bought or would buy mobile devices for education.

The paper provides empirical evidence for understanding the attitudes of distance learners towards academic library service provision using mobile devices. This research will assist libraries in planning future changes to the delivery of their services.

The current body of literature lacks direct quantitative feedback from students on their information habits and how they would like to access information in the future. The paper fills some of the gaps.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between mobile self-efficacy and personal information management (PIM) practices through mobile phones and smartphones, and additionally, to explore the challenges of using a smart device for PIM.

This study followed Preferred Reporting Items for the Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines to achieve the objectives. A comprehensive search strategy, inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria were formulated in light of PRISMA guidelines. The data were collected from different scholarly repositories, databases and core journals of PIM. The studies were included after four steps, i.e. identification, screening, eligibility and inclusion of studies.

Findings revealed that there was a positive relationship between mobile self-efficacy and PIM via mobile phones. People used two techniques for finding and re-finding information via mobile phones/smartphones. These techniques include browsing and searching information. People send information, share with others and save in draft folders to emails in mobile phones/smartphones for keeping information for future use. They organize their personal information in folders and use different applications such as Evernote, Google Calendar, alarm and organizer. They uninstall and update mobile applications with new versions, clear phone call history and backup personal information to desktop devices and cloud services to maintain personal information. PIM via mobile phone/smartphone challenges were also identified. These challenges were classified as information related challenges, technical challenges, mobile phone adaptability challenges and miscellaneous challenges.

This study will help library professionals and decision makers to devise information literacy instruction programs according to the users' needs. The results of this study will also open new horizons for system designers to devise mobile-based PIM tools according to users' needs.

While high-stakes mobile assessment is increasing, researchers have done little to adapt traditional assessments to this new medium. The present study developed and tested a new response method for personality assessment using a mobile-first gamification design paradigm.

Participants used smartphones to “swipe” right or left to indicate agreement or disagreement with Goldberg's (1992) Big Five adjective indicators. These scores were correlated with responses to a Likert-type measure and participants provided reactions to both measures.

Each of the swipe-based measures was found to be a reliable and valid predictor of the corresponding dimensions measured using the Likert-type scale. Reactions to the swipe measure were mixed when compared to a traditional Likert-type measure. Response latencies of swipes were used as an indicator of self-schema beliefs. Transformed latency scores contributed incremental variance to the prediction of Likert responses beyond the dichotomous responses alone for some personality dimensions.

Convergent validity between the two measures was likely attenuated due to differences in scales, response methods, devices, connection speeds, and social desirability effects indicating that the present results may constitute a lower-bound estimate of convergent validity between the two measurement styles.

Designing assessments for mobile administration requires balancing trade-offs in speed, ease of use, and number of items relative to the reliability and validity of the measures.

Mobile-first designs such as swipe-based responses show potential to enhance future mobile assessment practices with further development.

The purpose of this paper is to review one library's experiences of creating mobile services and illustrate how, by developing expertise in emerging technologies, libraries can foster partnerships with other groups on campus and play a leading role in providing relevant student‐centred services.

The paper begins with a brief summary of mobile services offered by the Ryerson Library prior to the fall of 2008, discusses the results of a mobile device survey conducted that semester, and outlines the resulting mobile services that were developed by the Library which led to a campus‐wide collaboration to develop the framework for a student‐led mobile initiative. The technical framework and project management issues are also discussed.

A survey performed by the Ryerson University Library in the fall of 2008 indicated that smart phones were owned by approximately 20 percent of the student population but that within the next three years this figure could reach as much as 80 percent. To remain relevant, it is important that libraries adapt their services to this new environment.

The paper illustrates how library services can be adapted to the mobile environment and how the library can play a role in broader campus mobile initiatives.

All libraries will be interested in exploring the library services that were developed and adapted for mobile devices and of particular interest to academic libraries will be the building of collaborative relationships with other academic departments to provide services to students.

Marketers are increasing their use of digital strategies and prioritizing digital tactics, although the effectiveness digital video advertising (DVA) has not been examined empirically. The purpose of this research is to suggest that it is useful for advertisers to consider theories of the past to understand the link between product, advertising format and message processing.

To examine DVA effectiveness, this study utilized a 2-product type (utilitarian vs hedonic) × 2-product involvement (low vs high) x 2-platform (laptop vs mobile) mixed-design. Participants were recruited from a research company, who invited members of their panel to participate in an online experiment.

DVA for hedonic products resulted in stronger attitudes toward the ad and brand, and intentions to purchase. DVA for low involvement products resulted in stronger purchase intentions and likelihood to opt-in for more information. Moreover, there was an interaction between product category and involvement across all five measures of DVA effectiveness.

Like TV commercials, DVA is more effective when used with low involvement, hedonic products than with high involvement, utilitarian products. Additionally, the device on which the advertisement is viewed impacts the effectiveness of DVA.

Companies promoting high-involvement utilitarian products may consider alternative advertising strategies (e.g. MDAs, apps, websites and advergames), as DVA may not be the most effective ad format.

As technology continues to develop and marketers continue to pursue growing numbers of consumers through digital means and on mobile devices, understanding how device type influences advertising effectiveness is important for media strategy, message placement and marketing metrics. This research takes one step in that direction.

This study aims to adopt cloud technology and develop a “cloud bookcase system” to make it possible to provide consistent mobile reading experiences to allow readers to use all kinds of mobile devices to read e-books.

This study implements a cloud bookcase and uses four indicators (system quality, information quality, service quality, user satisfaction) to evaluate the system for reading e-books.

After completing the system, the authors used a questionnaire to evaluate the system. The results show that the quality can meet the needs and satisfaction of users. Subsequent interviews with some of the participants also reveal the biggest concerns of readers include library policy, resources and system quality.

System quality, information quality, service quality and satisfaction are adopted as the indicators to assess the ratings from people using mobile devices to read e-books on the cloud bookcase system developed in this study to evaluate whether the cloud bookcase system is a successful information system as well as the relations between mobile device factors and user ratings. The results indicate that the ratings from more than half of the readers for the system, as shown in the various indicators, achieve more than 60%. From the interview results, the results show that some participants also reveal there is still room for improvement in some areas.

This study implements a cloud bookcase and there are three contributions: (1) the cloud bookcase system developed in this study based on related theories proves able to meet the needs of users, (2) this system had high ratings for all four indicators, (3) the interview responses reveal that most people regard system quality as the most important, and some of the people value some of the items more, including library policy, readers' interests and more resources, especially the number of e-books available.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the current state of worldwide mobile usage; mobile technologies; libraries' use of mobile technologies including a review of library mobile catalog options, both vendor‐supplied and in‐house created; perspectives from current library leaders and innovators on the importance of incorporating the libraries' resources into the mobile environment; and future directions for mobile library services.

A range of recently published literature (2008‐2010), which aims to provide practical statistics and resources for libraries wishing to mobilize their web site, is summarized in order to provide the reader with tools for creating a mobile library proposal. The sources are sorted into sections: mobile phone popularity, smartphones/web‐enabled phones, mobile phone use, library mobile web sites and catalogs, and what library leaders have to say.

The paper provides an evaluative summary of mobile statistics and resources, indicating the salient points and how to find more information for libraries wishing to draft a mobile library proposal.

The paper presents a useful source of information for both libraries wishing to create a proposal for a mobile library site, and for libraries that simply want an overview of the current state of mobile use and technologies.

The paper includes up‐to‐date data about worldwide mobile phone penetration rates and mobile phone use, and is the first to argue for proposing the development of both a mobile library web site and a mobile catalog.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the usability of the mobile library App of Chongqing University and to provide recommendations for improving the experience of App users.

Usability testing, which comprised pre-test questionnaires, accomplishing tasks, and post-test surveys, was conducted in this study. The effectiveness and efficiency of the App, as well as user satisfaction with it, were measured.

The mobile App was proven effective but the efficiency of the App required improvement. With regard to user satisfaction, the factors “clarity” and “usefulness” received the lowest and highest scores, respectively. The descriptions of mobile services were unclear and confused users; nonetheless, the services provided by this App were appealing and useful to the users. Based on the measured user experience, this study proposed several recommendations for enhancing the usability of the App.

An increasing number of domestic and foreign libraries have begun to use mobile Apps to provide new services to patrons. In the future, smartphones are likely to become crucial to the delivery of information services. Given the extensive use of the Super Star Mobile Library system adopted by Chongqing University Library in China, the usability of such a system must be investigated. Improving the usability of the mobile library App can help enhance user experience.