The Biblio File

Jenny Levine at The Shifted Librarian has posted about her experience with ThinkeringSpaces, a beta version of a portable, scalable, learning/teaching/interactive space to be used in libraries. Some of the things they have incorporated so far is using RFID technology to let users add information to library resources, using Wii video game technology to allow users to manipulate library content in different ways, projectors and screens for content display, and a self-contained LAN.

The point is to bring spaces into libraries that let people collaborate around the content that already exists in in our buildings, add new content to the mix, mash it all up to create something new, and share it with the community. Rinse. Repeat. It’s a way to connect people with the physical world and help them make sense of it by interacting with and changing it.

I think something like this would work fabulously to add an interactive aspect to library displays, or to highlight different library resources, or, even better, librarians could work in conjunction with a professor to have such an installation combine course material and library resources to create a different, more interactive learning space.

Campus Technology is reporting that Vanderbilt has released a version of its website designed to be accessed via an iPhone:

Vanderbilt University has released a version of its homepage designed for the Apple iPhone. The site was created by the Vanderbilt News Service’s Office of Web Communications, which is working to optimize the university Web site for other mobile devices.

In some ways I think this is cool, but at the same time I wonder if this isn’t jumping the gun a little bit, as I still haven’t seen a whole lot of students walking around with iPhones.

Michael Stephens has an interesting post at the ALA TechSource blog on a presentation he attened on SMS reference. The presenters were Beth Stahr and Angela Dunnington from Southeastern Louisianna University, and they said that even though the number of questions received during the 2005-2006 academic year were relatively low, (84) Stephens reports that

Even with the low numbers, the librarians were positive about the service and believed it had a place in their library. They offered that the service needs to be marketed – and sustained and repeated as students come and go.

I emailed Beth to find out what service they use, which she said is Altarama. I also asked her if they kinds of questions they recieved were the kind that could be answered via a text message, and she said they can almost always be answered in the 160 character limit, and were mostly directional in scope.

For the money, this seems like a (relatively) inexpensive way to add another service level.

The Kept Up Librarian is reporting that the University of Florida has a service providing free text messaging to students. While I remain unconvinced about the usefulness of text messenging when it comes to reference services as some have suggested, I do see how this could be useful for advertising purposes. If the library was, for instance, giving a workshop on RefWorks, a text could be sent to everyone on campus reminding them an hour or two beforehand.

I first heard about Sony’s new Portable Reader System on ComandN, and then found this write-up about it on The Handheld Libriarian.  It’s a portable e-book/PDF reader that seems to address a lot of the problems previous handheld e-book readers had. The screen on the Sony PRS is supposed to be much easier on the eyes because the screen refreshes itself only when  you turn the page. The memory also sounds like it is pretty good. I can see a lot of potential for these in libraries, particularly as more of our reference books are being purchased as e-books.

Lifehacker reports that a company named Perooz is making it possible to read magazines on your ipod. Interesting choice of demographic to start marketing this service towards. . .