Category Archives: Evidence gathering

Pathways To Best Practice guides

We’ve recently launched a new feature on the blog – the Pathways to Best Practice guides. This series of documents brings together the resources we’ve been collecting during the project as well as examples of initiatives and the lessons learned which should help you if you are thinking of implementing something similar.

The Pathways To Best Practice are available now from the menubar, or you can access them all from the Pathways to Best Practice starting page. Below is a preview of the guides you’ll be able to find (click on the image to go to the starting page).

Pathways To Best Practice guides

Pathways To Best Practice guides (click on image to go to starting page)

Case studies page

Throughout the course of the projects we’ve been collecting a number of case studies; some of which we’ve shared via the blog, and some via the test community site. We’ve now created a page to bring all these together with a brief overview of each case study – this can be accessed from the menu bar or directly at: https://mlibraries.jiscinvolve.org/case-studies/ 

The case studies are:

The project will soon be coming to a close, but if you have any work within the area of mobile technologies in libraries that you would like to share with others via a case study, please let me know (ideally we’d be looking to get everything published before the end of September).

Which library content providers are utilising mobile technologies?

During the course of the project, we’ve been keeping track of which library content providers are utilising mobile technologies, by speaking to suppliers at exhibitions and by checking details via their own websites and guides produced by libraries. There are a variety of different approaches, which we thought would be useful information to share.

Not all providers are supporting access to their content via mobile devices, though many are. Some are ensuring their content displays on different sizes and types of devices via mobile websites, whilst others are choosing to develop their own mobile application (see earlier blog post on mobile web vs. mobile app if you are not sure of the difference).

Authentication is a common issue for many of the providers, particularly those currently offering resources via authentication systems such as Shibboleth, Athens, or a proxy server. Though many of these work relatively seamlessly now on a desktop or laptop computer, mobile browsers do not cope well with multiple redirects and sometimes time out. Some suppliers offer full text access via mobile devices, but only when on site (via IP range), whilst others have systems for supporting off site access. This is often by creating a verification code whilst on campus and using that to log into a mobile app, which then provides access for a period of time without having to log in. Some also support full text when accessing via VPN.

There are a number different purposes for the mobile apps and websites – some aim to facilitate discovery of resources, whilst others focus on saving material for reading via mobile devices (or a combination). Apps for reading sometimes have the option to save material offline so that it can be read without an internet connection (useful when travelling).

More suppliers appear to be providing multiple options (e.g. they may have initially just had an iPhone app, but now have apps for other devices as well as a mobile website). We’ve also noticed that mobile websites are becoming more common, many of which auto detect that the site is being access via a mobile device, which is a real advantage if they are being accessed from another site (e.g. the library’s website/search tool) rather than via the suppliers website.

What’s best for users though? Many librarians feel that numerous apps are not much use to the average library user – they want access to the content and may not be aware which supplier it comes via. Often subject interests will spread across different suppliers too, so having to search on a number of different mobile apps would be a long process (something that discovery services have tried to prevent) and having things stored in multiple places could be frustrating. For specialist researchers, apps focused on their area may be useful, but the most library users it’s likely that mobile friendly websites will be of more use, particularly if the library has a search tool to search for content across different providers.

Rather than replicate information already out there, we have added our findings to the list of providers on the m-libraries section of the Library Success wiki. Here’s a preview – for the full up-to-date version click on the image to open the section on the wiki.

M-libraries wiki screenshot

M-libraries wiki screenshot

We hope you find this information useful in your own library in supporting your users. If you know any further information about mobile options from suppliers, please let us know or you can register an account on the Library Success wiki and edit it directly.

Mobile technologies in libraries – end of project survey

The m-libraries support project is part of JISC’s Mobile Infrastructure for Libraries programme running from November 2011 until September 2012.

The project aims to build a collection of useful resources and case studies based on current developments using mobile technologies in libraries, and to foster a community for those working in the m-library area or interested in learning more.

At the beginning of the project we ran a survey to gather information, to discover what was needed to help libraries decide on a way forward, and to begin to understand what an m-libraries community could offer to help (full report available). It’s now time to revisit these areas to see how things have changed.

Please answer the following few questions – they should only take 5-10 minutes and all questions are optional.

This is an open survey – please pass the survey link on to anyone else you think might be interested via email or social media: http://svy.mk/mlibs2

 

Perspectives on mobile delivery

Cake and conversation by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Last week I delivered a workshop in collaboration with Gill Needham from Open University. We’d both been invited to give a presentation at the Cake and Conversation: The power of a Library in the palm of your hand event with a practical focus to members of staff at University of Bath. We thought it made sense to combine our time and work together to enable us to plan a full workshop themed on ‘perspectives on mobile delivery’. We took a broad approach first, narrowing it down and then looking forward:

  1. Perspectives on mobile delivery – horizon scanning (presentation slides)
  2. Perspectives on mobile delivery – case study (presentation slides)
  3. Perspectives on mobile delivery – activity
  4. Perspectives on mobile delivery – looking forward (presentation slides)

I began the workshop by giving an overview of some of the work currently happening in mobile technologies in libraries, including the work of the JISC Mobile Infrastructure for Libraries programme as well as further afield. I’m currently working on some pathways to best practice documents on a number of different topics and shared some of the examples we’ve collected as part of that.

Gill then gave a really useful overview of the work Open University have been involved in over the last few years, researching how users could utilise mobile devices for library resources and services, and how their mobile offerings have developed. One point I found particularly telling is that access to resources via mobile is one of the criteria used by Open University for selection of online resources, demonstrating the fact that this is now expected rather than an additional bonus.

We then worked together on an activity for the attendees. They had been split into six groups with a mixture of library, IT, learning technologies and academic staff in each group. Each group was given a persona which they had to consider in the context of providing a mobile service to support them in their studies/research. Gill and I were really impressed with the creativity shown (and the amount of effort some groups had put into giving their product a name!). Each are outlined below…

Laura

Laura (click for full persona) is a researcher in psychology who spends a lot of time travelling and therefore needs to be able to work (e.g. perform literature searches) whilst mobile, using her iPad. The group came up with an idea for a collaborative online research space called LAURA (Learning Academic User Research Area) which would enable Laura and her colleagues to add notes, comments and ideas about the research from wherever they are to a secure area which is regularly backed up. This area would be structured and searchable, and would also include journal alerts for relevant research.

Laura by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

 

Simon

Simon (click for full persona) is a Sports and Exercise Science student who spends a lot of time playing sport. He tends to study during the day as he works or socialises in the evening, and although he visits the library regularly he isn’t familiar with the library systems or how to find library resources. The group decided to utilise the opportunity to promote the library services to Simon by developing a mobile web service. This service would provide library specific as well as extra study resources and would integrate VLE, Student Union, maps and space management, and account information as well as provide social functions and augmented reality.

Simon by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Sandi

Sandi (click for full persona) is currently on placement for her social work degree. She spends a lot of time travelling between clients and also is a single parent of a young daughter. She struggles to organise her work and studies and has very little time for reading but is aware that she needs more. The approach this group took was really interesting – they broke her day up to work out when she could study and what they could develop to help her. They came up with the idea of a v3Rs (Voice Recognition Reading Recommendation Service), which she could use whilst driving to dictate notes based on her experiences with clients. This would free up time which she usually spends typing up notes, and would also act as a smart search engine. The system would look for key research terms within her notes, and search subject specific databases for relevant readings. When she was ready to study that evening, she would have a list of the appropriate resources ready to read.

Sandi by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Joshua

Joshua (click for full persona) is a final year student studying International Management and Modern Languages. He has recently returned from his year studying abroad, and travels regularly both for studying and volunteering during vacation. The group highlighted the fact that for some like Joshua who travels a lot, offline access to material is important to reduce roaming data charges, and access to resources from different devices is an advantage. They came up with the idea of an app for all platforms which would bring together all the relevant study resources including library services and resources, VLE, bibliographic management, portfolio and social networks. As much of this as possible would be available for offline download so it can be accessed without an internet connection.

Joshua by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Jamila

Jamila (click for full persona) is studying for an MBA via distance learning. She is sponsored by her employer and works as a senior account executive for a large advertising agency with offices in New York, Tokyo and London. She travels a lot and is constantly connected online via her MacBook, iPad and iPhone. The group came up with an idea for PRIME (Positive Recommendations & Information Mobile Experience), a mobile-friendly recommendation platform that would source library content from departmental contacts, course colleagues, alumni and business contacts and provide a means of offline content provision.

Jamila by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Liam

Liam (click for full persona) is an art history academic with a flamboyant teaching style. He isn’t too comfortable with technology but knows he needs to meet the expectations of his students to understand more about how to utilise mobile devices. The group came up with an multi-pronged approach for Liam to provide support for both his own needs and his students’ needs. Liam would have a pre-loaded customised iPad with capability to capture videos and post to a video blog which would be embedded into Moodle. This would be used for additional lecture material or pre-study material. For his own needs the iPad would be used to help him manage access to library resources, both online resources and reminders for renewing print resources.

Liam by joeyanne, on Flickr
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License  by  joeyanne 

Following the presentation of these ideas, Gill and myself briefly gave an overview of some of the steps forward including the community support aspect of the JISC m-library community support project and the International m-libraries conference at Open University in September.

I’d like to thank both the organisers and the attendees for a really engaging workshop and lots of innovative ideas, and Gill for working with me to deliver this workshop.

The full set of photographs from the day are available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeyanne/sets/72157630600387600/

LITA Mobile Computing Interest Group meeting at ALA Annual Conference 2012

This blog post was originally posted as a guest blog post on the ACRL TechConnect blog.

I attended the ALA Annual Conference 2012 and was up bright and early to get to the 8am Sunday morning session from the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) Mobile Computing Interest Group (MCIG) session. It included four presentations on a variety of different topics plus Q&A and some time for more general discussion. Below is my summary of the presentations and discussion. (The presentation slides are available at ALA Connect).

NCSU Libraries Mobile Scavenger Hunt
– Anne Burke, North Caroline State University (Slides)

Anne spoke about the way NCSU have revitalised their traditional induction sessions by offering a mobile scavenger hunt to help introduce students to navigating the library and asking librarians for help. They hoped to improve student engagement, foster confidence and introduce students to emerging technologies by using iPod Touches to deliver a scavenger hunt which they worked through in groups. Although they looked into existing solutions such as SCVNGR and Scavenger Hunt with Friends, these were either too costly or relied on geolocation which can be a problem for small areas like libraries.

Their chosen solution uses Evernote (one account for each iPod Touch, and a master one for staff) and a Google spreadsheet alongside a set of questions on paper. Students record their responses via the iPod Touch (either as text, photo or audio) as they move around the library, and staff can keep an eye on progress. When students return, they are shown a slideshow of photos from the groups, given their scores, and prizes are given out (chocolates). Any questions which appeared to cause problems are discussed as part of the feedback also. NCSU use these for an one-hour instruction sessions and are currently looking into offering a self-guided version. Further details are available on the NCSU library website.

Gimme! The mobile app development project at Scottsdale Public Library
– Aimee Fifarek and Ann Porter, Scottsdale Public Library (Slides)

Aimee and Ann shared their experiences of developing a mobile app using a grant fund. Unusually, Scottsdale Public Library received funding before deciding what sort of mobile app they wanted to produce. They established a project team bringing together technology staff and tech-savvy staff from across the library in order to get investment from a variety of different areas first, and then brainstormed ideas with the team. They also wanted to ensure whatever they built was valuable to their customer base so they employed consultants to research user needs. The consultants also then developed the app and supported implementation.

The mobile app they chose to produce, Gimme!, is a book recommendation system which combines catalogue details with book recommendations from library staff. A number of different systems are used to achieve this – they use the Goodreads API with Feedburner (which they get from their library catalogue) to combine reviews with the descriptions and book covers (using the ISBN to link it together). Gimme! works across all devices, you can try it out at: http://gimme.scottsdalelibrary.org/

Before the first Connection: A marketing campaign for a Law Library’s Mobile Application
– Terry Ballard, New York Law School, Mendik Library (Slides)

Terry spoke about how the New York Law School had wanted to get ahead of the curve by implementing a mobile app. Having investigated a number of options, they chose to use a third-party solution, Boopsie. However at the time it didn’t offer support for course reserves. They spoke to Boopsie about this and arranged for Boopsie to develop this additional functionality (at no extra cost as they were aware that other libraries would be interested in this feature as well). They also wanted to integrate a Google Custom Search on mobile, so they spoke to Google and were able to add this option. Although the usage of the mobile app has so far been relatively low, the number of search sessions via mobile has stayed relatively high since the launch.

It’s time to look at our mobile website again
– Bohyun Kim, Florida International University Medical Library (Slides)

Bohyun presented a really interesting overview of the current state of mobile websites for libraries. To set the context, she gave some figures about mobile web usage in US – more mobile devices are now shipping than desktops, and over the last 5 years AT&T mobile web use has grown by 20,000%! As devices and mobile web capabilities have improved, the way we expect to use mobile websites is changing. We are spending more time accessing the web via our mobiles instead of desktop and are doing more detailed tasks such as research and shopping. Bohyun looked at the mobile websites which Aaron Tay reviewed in 2010 and revisited them to see how they had changed. It was really interesting to see the changes, many of which were common to most websites:

  • Research tools being added (or made more prominent), often with a search bar at the top of the mobile website
  • Additional functionality for library transactions (view the library account, course reserve, renew books and other items on loan)

Design had generally simplified and moved towards websites that look similar to native mobile apps, though there were different approaches. For example, some library mobile websites had moved from a list to icons, whilst others have moved from icons to a list! Bohyun concluded that it is no longer relevant to have a companion site for mobile with minimum content – the mobile site should aim to deliver the same functionality as the main website. She emphasised the importance of an environmental scan to see what others are doing, and to research your target audience to understand their needs and expectations and commented on how to market your mobile service more effectively.

Discussion

The four presentations were all excellent and we had lots of Q&As so discussion was dispersed throughout, but we also briefly discussed the general topic of responsive web design. This followed nicely from Bohyun’s presentation as it is evident that there is no longer a clear cut difference between what we expect from a mobile website and what we expect from a desktop website. Add to the mix the tablet market and its varying sizes, and it is clear that responsive web design is a useful approach to take. Fortunately, there was a presentation at the conference later that day on responsive web design and you can view further information and a copy of the presentation online.

As last time, I found the mobile computing interest group session really interesting and encourage anyone interested in mobile technologies in libraries to follow the future discussions and webinars from LITA MCIG.

Mobile technologies in libraries: information sharing event

The information sharing event organised by the project was fully booked in less than 24 hours and we’ll be welcoming 60 attendees to Birmingham on Tuesday 8th May – many apologies for those of you on the waitlist who didn’t manage to get a place.

In addition to our keynote speaker, James Clay, we have 17 other speakers and facilitators who will be providing us with lightning talks and breakout discussion sessions throughout the day. The full programme is as follows (attendees will receive printed copies on the day):

Tech toolbox

Thanks to the Open University who have kindly offered to provide the use of mobile devices, we’ll have a tech toolbox area with different gadgets to take a look at. This will be available during the breakout sessions as well as during breaks so that you can get hands on experience with different mobile devices and technologies (including apps) and consider how they could be utilised or supported in your library.

Resources from the day

Some of the resources are already available to view on the event Lanyrd page, and we encourage attendees to continue to add coverage to the page including photos, blog posts, presentations and notes.

Following from afar

If you’re unable to attend but would like to follow the event, we’ll be encouraging attendees to tweet using the #mlibs hashtag so please do set up a saved search to follow relevant tweets. We’ve also set up a Twitter list of attendees which you may wish to subscribe to. If you want to send in a question to the event during the day, please use the #mlibs hashtag and ideally include @joeyanne, @ostephens or @evidencebase in the tweet so one of the organisers can pick it up.

Arriving the day before?

If you’re arriving on Monday (or live in the local area) and would like to meet up the previous evening for food and/or drinks, we’ll be in All Bar One on Newhall Street from around 6.30pm. If you’re planning to join us, please email me so we have an idea of numbers to let the venue know.

Looking forward to seeing some of you next week! 🙂

Survey analysis – What would you like from an m-libraries community?

Respondents were asked what they would like to see provided by an m-libraries community.  A few respondents were supportive of the need for a community resource, but did not provide any comments as to how it could be configured. Many respondents however provided suggestions. These suggestions are summarised below (please note that there is some overlap between categories):

A place to find and share experience and best practice

Perhaps unsurprisingly most of those who provided comments wanted to see a space where experience and good practice could be shared and which provided a central source of information of relevance to those involved in m-library developments. Some respondents provided more detail about features that they would like to see in such a space.  These included:

  • A place to share and discuss known issues and problems and receive answers from experts and peers and a safe place to ask questions
  • FAQs to avoid duplication of effort
  • A best practice archive, including problem solving and how to guides (possibly by resource or publisher), standards of delivery of services to mobile devices, guidance on ongoing management and evaluation of m-library initiatives
  • Success (and failure) stories and case studies
  • A place to find out what other libraries are doing
  • Tutorials and training tools
  • Evidence based research
  • Wiki functionality to post examples
  • A product review/ app evaluation system to which providers themselves might contribute

Technical advice and support

Some respondents specifically referred to a desire for technical advice and support. One commented that some libraries may lack the technical skills to effectively implement mobile technologies:

I think technical advice and assistance is one of the key problem areas as many libraries do not invest in web developers or technical staff and that’s a big barrier to mobile provision

Open source support

A few respondents referred to a place to share open source developments and code specific to the mobile web, for example:

Sample code, particularly redirectors, platform specific css examples, code that recognizes and adapts to os& platform

Additional suggestions
There were some additional suggestions including:

bundling. bulk purchase licence agreements for e books onto e readers

Develop ‘play’ packs to use to extend library staff knowledge and experience of mobile gadgets and technologies.

opportunity for sharing development costs, especially cross-platform

Conclusion
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. Some are unfortunately outside the scope of this project (free wifi for all is a lovely idea but sadly not something we could organise!), but we will be passing suggestions on to JISC as some may be within their broader scope or of interest for future innovation. The suggestions within scope are incredibly useful for the project – we will use these to help steer development of the community resource from the project.

Survey analysis – areas for further information

Respondents were asked whether there was further information that would support them in making decisions regarding the use of mobile technologies.  The following outlines the nature of the responses received.  It should be noted that the categories below are not mutually exclusive.

Experience of others

There was a need to be able to share experiences with others and to learn from, and support, peers as well as simply understand what others were doing and have a forum for discussion.

Keeping in touch and seeing what other libraries are doing in this area. Sharing resources/projects what is happening in this area is a high priority we all don’t need to re-invent the wheel.

A few respondents explicitly wished for this sharing not only be at a national level but to be international and cover a range of different sectors.

Case studies of implementation of mobile technologies

Such case studies would be useful to highlight success stories as well as lessons learned and may be presented in a more formal way than might be through a discussion.  The following provides an example to highlight this need:

It is good to continue to have information on case studies of how mobile technologies are being used for REAL benefit, not just additional marketing. Most of the literature around QR codes in libraries explains possible uses, rather than real examples and feedback about the success of those uses, so more data about the success would be good.  Case studies need to be clear what the costs and technical support needs were, as well as what the strategic need and benefit was.

Horizon scanning and trend analysis

This included a central information source concerning the current state of the art in mobile technologies in libraries as well as ‘trend spotting’- looking at current and future trends.

Reviews, current awareness and evaluation

There was some demand for current awareness news, reviews,  recommendations and evaluations of particular mobile technologies.  Responses included:

librarian reviews of technology involved and guidelines for best practices.

….important to be aware of all tech developments not just phones, and even though phones will be more widespread – the tablet market looks like it is going a lot wider at the moment too

‘How to’ guidance

There was demand for information and guidance around various aspects of setting up and implementing m-library initiatives, for example:

How to get the most out of smart phones, iPads and equivalent, setting up and sincing with PCs

Recommendations on how to write a mobile library website; how some sort of device- detection can be used to reformat the site, which perhaps could be used on existing sites.

Evidence based materials

Some respondents expressed a desire to be able to cite evidence from elsewhere to support their own developments. This could be in a number of areas for example, benefits, making a case, user behaviour and evaluation:

It would be useful to have more information on how students are using and may potentially use mobile technologies.

Research about mobile usability

A single information ‘hub’

Some desired a central point for information on all aspects of mobile library technology and implementation. This is summarised by this response:

A central place for known issues and problems would be welcomed, too – many libraries are duplicating effort by creating their own FAQs, where one centralised knowledge base would seem an obvious solution. Something similar for ideas and innovations, methods of publicity and examples of projects and best practice elsewhere, would be helpful, too.

Interestingly one respondent suggested a need for  information that could be understood by non technical people:

More detailed description for non-tech people to use

Training /coaching

Three respondents explicitly referred to needing training/coaching, either in person or via a webinar.

Conclusion

We hope to cover many of these areas during the project, and this has helped shape our plans for future blog posts and areas to cover when gathering case studies to share. We have actually already covered one request:

Just more info re web app vs native app, because it seems like most staff only know about native apps and have no idea about web apps

Hopefully our recent blog post, Native mobile app vs mobile web, fulfils this need.

Subscribe to the blog by RSS or by email if you’d like to receive updates on the topics mentioned here.

Survey analysis – barriers/challenges to implementation

Respondents were asked to indicate any barriers or challenges they had to implementing mobile initiatives. They were given the opportunity to provide open responses as well as choose from a preselected range of answers.  The bar chart below shows the distribution of responses:

Barriers/challenges to implementation

Barriers/challenges to implementation

Some of the open responses provided further information in areas that were covered in the closed response options whilst some responses covered new topics.  Three respondents used the opportunity to state that they foresaw no barrier to development.  Some of the themes emerging from the open responses included:

Not a priority

Of the 46 respondents who indicated that m-library development was not a priority some provided further detail to support this.  This included a number of different situations:

Not a *library* priority. A very high amount of work required on other aspects such as refurbishments and stock  moves means little time for development. If the students aren’t complaining that we don’t have mobile apps/mobile-friendly sites, it’s hard to prioritise above other projects and ‘firefighting’, especially when the development will be time- consuming as it is slightly specialist and new.

The Library itself has mobile accessibility as a major priority, but it doesn’t seem to be ranked as importantly by the University.

There is no expert or interested person who has the time to make this a priority. It is currently seen as an add-on to existing core activities, a nice-to-have.  This may change over time as smart phones become more ubiquitous.

Cost

Twenty five respondents provided details of barriers explicitly concerned with cost including costs to the library and to users:

Not enough money to get needed devices (iPods, iPads) for teaching

Cost – not all users can afford mobile technologies (e.g. iPads/smart phones), so we need to develop services which are still accessible to all.

Financial restraints. I believe we know what we need, but require significant resources to either build something in house, or hire someone to build something for us. The adoption of mobile services will probably happen gradually for us, with a mobile catalogue first, and a mobile website at least a year or two away.

Time

Fifteen respondents referred to barriers concerned with time constraints e.g:

Lack of staff time to devote to learning and creating mobile apps

Library Systems is heavily under-resourced and are unable to allocate the time required to develop a mobile interface.

Skills

82 respondents had indicated that lack of skills were a barrier to m-library development. This was primarily due to a lack of technical skills in the library, though lack of experience was also mentioned.

Uncertainty

A few respondents provided responses which could be considered to see uncertainty as a barrier to development.  It would appear that some of this uncertainty could be addressed by the provision of more information about m-library developments.  Examples of responses included:

The biggest challenge is that there are lots of strategies for creating mobile-friendly resources, but no clear winner. We currently do not use a CMS (though we are looking into it). In the meantime, do we continue to maintain two sites, or revise our current design so that it is mobile-first? What javascript library should we use–is jQuery Mobile worth the pain of learning, or should we look to HTML 5 & CSS 3? etc.

It’s not preventing us, but the variety of devices makes it more difficult to use the mobile technologies; also, the lack of standardization between publishers and content providers of e-resources makes it a challenge to provide access to these materials

Infrastructure /policy

Seventeen respondents referred to barriers which concerned infrastructure or policy issues and in a mixture of internal and external contexts:

We can have a go at some things, but here our web site is not immediately under our control so we can’t create a mobile version, and this doesn’t seem to be a prority although it is one for us. We have better control of the catlagues and use the accessible version to create a reasonable mobile version.

Not all our systems are mobile compatible

Additional comments

Some respondents provided additional comments which do not fit into the above categories and were only reflected in a few cases.  These included:

issues with service provider licenses and permissions.

Misconceptions of ‘mobile technology’, and technical ‘fear’ of the unknown.

Conclusion

It’s clear that at present there are a number of barriers and challenges facing libraries which are prohibiting or delaying implementation of m-library initiatives. Some of these are specific to individual institutions, whilst some are common across a number of libraries. This information is useful for the project and we certainly hope that we can help to reduce some of those barriers, particularly those concerning information about mobile initiatives, and helping provide evidence to equip libraries to tackle other barriers.