Category Archives: Uncategorized

Apps vs. Mobile Web Optimized Interfaces for Search and Discovery

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I really wish the publishing companies, scholarly societies, and database vendors that are exclusively developing apps for mobile devices would rethink their preference for apps over interfaces that are optimized to work on mobile web browsers. Ever since Apple launched its app store on iTunes, web developers have been debating whether it is preferable to do a mobile web optimized site or instead release an app. Now that the vendors that libraries rely on for databases have earnestly entered the world of mobile design, there seems to be a lack of uniformity of opinion about the best way to proceed. Some companies have only released apps:

Others have only done interfaces that are slimmed down enough to work comfortably within a mobile web browser:

Some have hedged their bets and offer both apps and mobile web interfaces:

Some notable vendors have yet to release their mobile service yet. LexisNexis Academic will have a mobile interface this summer, though I’m still not clear if it’s an app or a mobile browser interface. ProQuest’s new platform for it’s databases is supposed to have mobile browser interface, but I haven’t seen it yet (I’m not sure if it hasn’t been released yet or if it requires you to switch over to the new platform, which we haven’t yet done in my library). Having tried most of the apps and web interfaces for the products above and having thought about how my library will promote them to our students, I’ve come to the conclusion that for the moment, the mobile web experience is superior to the app one. Here are the reasons why I’m not a fan of the apps I’ve seen.

  • Apps have to be downloaded. The user who wants to find something has to first take the extra step of installing an app.
  • Apps have to be updated. I don’t know if the apps that the library vendors will provide will require as frequent updates as the other apps on my phone, but even having to do it at all is an extra annoying step for our users to periodically follow.
  • Clunky authentication. Users have to do things like fill out a form with their app and get an email back from the vendor with a special code to be entered into the app. Other apps have to be “paired” up while the user is on the library’s or college’s network.
  • Idiosyncratic authentication. It’s hard enough getting our users to enter some sort of user name/password combination for most of our databases they access via regular web browsers, but at least it is a consistent experience. With apps, we’re expecting our users to get used to a variety of authentication schemes that vary from app to app. Furthermore, each app requires you to authenticate. If you use a browser to visit library databases (on a regular browser or a web one), you authenticate once that session and use as many databases as you want without having to re-authenticate each time you try a difference resource.
  • Apps take up space. Our library has huge ecosystem of databases. Do we really expect our users will want to use up valuable screen real estate and space in the phone’s memory with all the databases they may need?
  • Eclipse other databases. It’s already challenging enough to get users to recall that there are more databases than the ones with the easy-to-recall brand names (JSTOR, LexisNexis). A user who has downloaded a database app or two is going to be less likely to recall that there may be other, possibly more relevant, database options for mobile search. If you are looking at mobile optimized web page listing all the library’s mobile-friendly databases (perhaps sorted by subject, by title, etc.), there’s a greater chance they’ll use a wider variety of databases than if they’d downloaded an app or two.
  • App names often differ from regular web versions. Why should we add to the mental burden of our users by asking them to recall that what we call IEEE Computer Society Digital Library (an ungodly name to begin with) is the same as IEEE Xplore Mobile Digital Library (the former is the regular web version and the latter is the mobile app version)? Or expect them to know that buried in the sprawling app from Gale called Access My Library are the mobile versions of Business & Company Resource Center, Gale Virtual Reference Library, and more?
  • No link resolvers. I didn’t see any link resolvers in the apps. Admittedly, it’s not clear to me whether the link resolver we use (SFX) works properly in the mobile browsers I’ve used. Assuming that link resolvers can be made to work in the browser, I like that we can recreate the ecoystem of databases and link resolution that we have on the regular web. I don’t see how that ecosystem can be easily recreated in a world of mobile apps for each database.
  • Libraries can’t customize apps. The admin options that libraries are given to tinker with the look and feel of their web-based databases are not available with the app versions of databases.
  • Vendors don’t offer apps for all mobile operating systems. Very few apps come in versions for all the major mobile operating systems: iOS (for iPhones and iPod Touches), Android, and Blackberry.
  • Developing apps is expensive. The wish list of things I would like database vendors to fix or improve is lengthy. Spending precious time and money to develop apps is not at the top of my list. The cheaper and, in my mind, better option, is to develop for mobile web browsers first, as that lets vendors get their products onto a wider range of mobile device more quickly than if they were to take the time to develop apps for each of the mobile OSes.

I recognize that the vendors, publishers, and scholarly societies are just dipping their toes into the world of mobile services. I hope, though, that they don’t get carried away with apps and can recognize the limitations that those apps have right now.

H.W. Wilson Gets Swallowed Up

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I was saddened to hear yesterday on the Against the Grain blog that EBSCO would be acquiring H.W. Wilson. While I have no doubt that Wilson was ailing financially for a while and wasn’t exactly winning any love for its interface, I do have fond feelings for the company for two reasons. First, one of the few things that I recall about my elementary school library from the early 1970s was being introduced to the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. Second, while in library school at the Pratt Institute in the last 1990s, I went on a tour of the Wilson offices up in the Bronx. A a burgeoning library geek, I was thrilled to see cubicle farms where staff were actively indexing journals and magazines as we walked by. Even better, though, was the on-site printing plant that Wilson still maintained and was in operation when we visited.

Fewer database vendors means to me less competition and less innovation, bad news for those of us in the library world. Here’s the text of the email that went just went out moments ago to Wilson customers about the acquisition by EBSCO:

A New Future for H.W. Wilson

Dear Customers:

We have exciting news to share.  As you know, it has always been our goal to provide the best products and services to our customers, and we are dedicated to supporting the library community as a whole.  We will continue to uphold these objectives, and will do so together with EBSCO as we move forward. 

Effective May 31, 2011, Wilson has merged with EBSCO Publishing.  We have maintained a strong partnership with EBSCO through the years, and this joining marks an exciting new beginning that will be immensely positive for Wilson customers.  With more than 150 years of combined experience serving libraries and research needs, the strengths of both companies will come together to provide greater products and services – enabling us to take the Wilson databases to unprecedented heights, and together enhance the EBSCO databases as well.  As Wilson databases are added to the EBSCOhost platform, customers will be encouraged to transition to EBSCOhost, and you will begin to see the results of the combined effort of Wilson and EBSCO.

This partnership will enable huge strides for our companies in serving our customers, and helping you to support your end users.  We thank you for your business and loyalty through the years.  We look forward to serving your needs for years to come.

For questions that we anticipate will be frequently asked, please visit:  http://support.epnet.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=5482

Sincerely,

 

 


Deborah Loeding
Vice President, Sales & Marketing

 

Inexpensive Event in NYC on Mobile Services and Libraries

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In a few weeks, I’ll be one of four presenters at an event here in New York City on mobile services and libraries. If you are a member of the Library Association of the City University of New York (LACUNY), the event is free; otherwise it’s just $5. Here’s the announcement going out on various lists:

The Pocket Library: Trends in Mobile User Services
Thursday, May 12th
1:30pm – 4:00pm
CUNY Graduate Center, Rm C197

Please join the LACUNY Emerging Technologies Committee for a series of presentations on the use of mobile technologies in the delivery of library services. CUNY librarians will discuss challenges and opportunities related to the design, implementation, assessment, and promotion of mobile library services.

Light refreshments will be served. Admission is free for LACUNY members. Non-members pay a $5.00 admission fee at the door or online via PayPal. Space is limited so please register by May 6th to reserve your seat.

Register online at: http://lacuny.org/committees-and-roundtables/committees/emerging-technologies

Hunter College Libraries Mobile Web Project
Danielle Becker, Web Librarian, Hunter College
Discover what went into creating the Hunter College Libraries mobile web site. Hear about their mobile strategy and what their next steps are in their ongoing mobile development process.

Mobile Friendly Databases
Stephen Francoeur, Information Services Librarian, Baruch College
This presentation will examine the trend of databases that have web interfaces optimized for mobile devices or mobile apps. The usefulness and viability of these mobile solutions for databases will be explored, as will strategies for connecting your library’s users to these resources.

Mobile Information Literacy: Let’s Use an App for That!
Stefanie Havelka, Electronic Resources-Web Services Librarian, Lehman College
Alevtina Verbovetskaya, Instructional Technologies Librarian, Lehman College
Accessing data and information via apps and mobile websites has become the norm. To better serve our students and faculty, we as librarians need to keep abreast in the field of emerging technologies. We need to be able to identify authoritative apps and recommend free & paid apps to our patrons. We also need to teach our users how to be information literate on the go.

Using QR Codes to Link Real & Virtual Library Space
Joseph Deodato, Web Services Librarian, College of Staten Island
QR codes are two-dimensional barcodes that can be used to send text, audio, video, and other digital media to a user’s smartphone. Learn how QR codes can be used to deliver point of need services and link physical and virtual library space. Uses, benefits, and considerations for implementation will be discussed.

Naming Conventions for Databases

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One of the things I struggle with when thinking about the library website is how to name the databases and other online resources that we subscribe to at my library. My general principle is to have the database name on the library website match the way that the database names itself. In general, this means leaving the platform/vendor name out of the name we use on the library website. Rather than say “EBSCOhost Academic Search Complete” or “Academic Search Complete (EBSCOhost),” it makes more sense to just list it as “Academic Search Complete.”

I get that including the platform/vendor name as part of the naming system you use on the website may help those users who can’t quite remember the exact name of the database they were supposed to use or that they used once before. By offering the vendor or platform name (EBSCOhost, ProQuest, WilsonWeb, etc.) as well as the specific database name, we’re giving our users  more details that may trigger recognition. On the other hand, I’m more concerned that students be able to indicate the database name correctly in any citations that they include in a bibliography. In general, the style guides seem to suggest that you just use the database name. Many of the databases will generate citations for sources that you find, and those citations usually leave off the vendor or platform name.

This week, I noticed that a database we’ve listed as “Westlaw Campus” is probably more correctly referred to as “Campus Resarch.” Before I recommend to my colleagues that we rename the database on our site, I’m curious about how other libraries list that database on their library sites. If you’ve got 30 seconds, it would be great if you could indicate on this poll in Doodle how your library handles the naming of this database. I’ll do a post later where I summarize the results.

New Site for Finding LIS Events

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Blake Carver’s LIS empire has expanded to include a new site, LISEvents, that offers a calendar of conferences, webinars, seminars, etc. that would be of interest to folks working in the library and informaton science fields. I think that if enough people get involved to submit events to the site, it can become the go-to site to find conferences and replace older sites that rely on one person’s diligence to capture and publish this kind of information (such as the Library Related Conferences page).

Scientists’ Complaints about Slow Speed of Journal Publishing

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I’m deep in the middle of James Gleick’s wonderful new book, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, and ran across this complaint from 1954 by scientists feverishly working the decode DNA who found inadequate the traditional communication channels of journal publishing:

They all had different coding ideas. Mathematically the problem seemed daunting even to [George] Gamow. ‘As in the breaking of enemy messages during the war,’ he wrote in 1954, ‘the success depends on the available length of the coded text. As every intellegience officer will tell you, the work is very hard, and the success depends mostly on luck…I am afraid that the problem cannot be solved without the help of electronic computer.’ Gamow and [James] Watson decided to make it a club: the RNA Tie Club, with exactly twenty members. Each member received a woolen tie in black and green, made to Gamow’s design by a haberdasher in Losa Angeles. The game playing aside, Gamow wanted to create a communication channel to bypass journal publication. News in science had never moved so fast. ‘Many of the essential concepts were first proposed in informal discussions on both sides of the Atlantic and were then quickly broadcast to the congnoscenti,’ said another member, Gunther Stent, ‘by private international bush telegraph.’ (p. 294)

The “private international bush telegraph” of today’s scholars has expanded to a range of communication channels and tools, including subject repositories, FriendFeed, Twitter, IRC, wikis, etc.

Guilty Pleasures

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Last night, I finished reading Patti Smith’s wonderful memoir about her years with the artist, Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids. I’ve been reading it for the past week on an iPad on loan from work. The copy of book was courtesy of the New York Public Library’s subscription to OverDrive. In light of my post yesterday in which I expressed my frustration with HarperCollins’ newly announced policy that ebooks borrowed 26 times from a library’s OverDrive service will evaporate from that library’s ebook collection, it was most distressing to me to realize as I got to the last page of the book last night that what I had been reading and enjoying on my iPad for the past week was a HarperCollins ebook on OverDrive. My checkout of the book, courtesy of the always amazing New York Public Library, was one of the 26 that the library has been allotted for that title.

With each checkout in OverDrive, that fantastic book is one step closer to being erased from the library’s ebook collection. My pleasurable reading is now tinged with guilt (yes, there is a repressed Calvinist in me frequently strugging to ruin my enjoyment of anything fun in life). Still, as a librarian patron I shouldn’t have to feel this way, and I shouldn’t feel compelled (as I do now) to go make a small donation to NYPL earmarked for acquisitions. (I did in fact give them money this morning for that very reason).

Update (11:35 am, 2 March 2011): It was pointed out to me that the 26 circ and its gone policy is not a retroactive policy and will only affect titles purchased going forward. Details on this PDF of the letter that OverDrive CEO, Steve Potash, sent out last week.

eBook User’s Bill of Rights

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In the early 1990s, I acquired and edited new titles for Basic Books, which was at the time an imprint at HarperCollins. When I read the news last week that HarperCollins wants to limit the number of checkouts on their ebooks in OverDrive, I was incensed at my former employer. I’m still thinking through the calls for a boycott of HarperCollins, but in the meanwhile I can wholeheartedly support the eBook User’s Bill of Rights that is being widely circulated.

 

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

  • the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
  • the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
  • the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
  • the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks.  I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.
These rights are yours.  Now it is your turn to take a stand.  To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others.  Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

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Android App Review: Google Reader

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Before installing the official Google Reader app, I tried using the mobile browser interface for Google Reader (too cramped) and the My6Sense app (not as easy to use). I’m a hardcore user of Google Reader on the web (I’ve got nearly 900 feeds plugged in) and love to share some the gems that I find every day, so having the ability to chip away at that unread items list on my phone throughout the day is great. The sharing options are pretty much the same as on the web version (share and share with note). The send options are good too; I can pass along an item to Evernote (more on that app in a later post), Instafetch (more on that Instapaper knockoff app in a later post), Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.