5 iOS Apps for the Modern Librarian

I was recently asked by Peter Chapman, the Hon. Editor of Refer – the Journal of the Information Services Group of CILIP, to write an article about iOS apps. The article appears in the Spring issue of Refer (Vol. 27, No. 1) and for those who don’t subscribe I’ve reproduced the article below.It was sad to read that this is to be the last printed issue of Refer!

I bought my first iPhone back in 2008. It was also my first smartphone and I primarily envisaged using it for web and email (other than its functionality as a phone of course). Somewhat naively, I thought that I would pay little attention to the recently launched App Store, perceiving it as largely the domain of gamers. Two and half years later (and like most iPhone users I know), I now download and use a variety of apps on a daily basis for just about most tasks from checking bus/train times to cooking – not to mention playing the odd game!

Whilst very few apps are designed with the information professional in mind, or even more generally, for those with a love of books and libraries, a large number of them are useful to the modern librarian on the go. Here are some of those that I’ve tried and tested for iPhone and iPad.

Social Networking: HootSuite

Available for iPad/iPhone and iPod Touch
Free

It seems like a social network cannot exist these days unless it has an app. Although the web browsing experience is extremely good on an iOS device, the official apps for sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn put the essential functionality within easy reach. Whilst I have and use the above frequently, it can be beneficial to have one app that interfaces with some or all of your social networks. For a long time I favoured TweetDeck for this purpose. However, as I am unable to install the TweetDeck software on my work PC, I started to look around for an alternative and discovered HootSuite, a web based solution which now has a universal iOS app.

One of the benefits of using HootSuite is the ability to schedule tweets or Facebook status updates. This is particularly useful if you are responsible for updating multiple accounts. Whilst the web version also interfaces with LinkedIn and WordPress, at present the app itself is restricted to Facebook, Twitter and the location based Foursquare. HootSuite also offers URL shortening within the app using its native service ow.ly. Real time statistics for URLs shared in this way can also be viewed, although more detail is provided at hootsuite.com including clicks by region and top referers. Finally, the ability to translate your tweets or posts into a variety of languages is a nice touch, Although not one that I would use very often. However, the native language support does make HootSuite a viable option for those who don’t have English as a first language.

Whilst the app lacks some of the functionality of the web based service, It is nonetheless a great companion whilst out and about, and the ability to schedule makes it my favourite of the interfacing apps on the App Store.

2. Productivity: Dropbox

Available for iPad/iPhone and iPod Touch
Free

I was first introduced to Dropbox by my sister in law. As a student she relies heavily on the file sharing app for online backup. You can install Dropbox on a PC, Mac or Linux machine, as well as accessing and uploading files through the website at dropbox.com. The iOS app gives you full access to all your stored files including photos, video and audio. The app allows you to create folders and upload new or existing images from your photo library. Dropbox is the ideal solution for me as I often use multiple computers at work and so found myself constantly moving files around on USB sticks. Thanks to Dropbox those days are gone and the fact that I can also access files on the go through my iPhone or iPad, means that I’ve always got the paperwork that I need when I need it for important meetings.

Dropbox offers 2GB of storage for free, but you can increase your allowance by referring Dropbox to other users on Twitter, Facebook or by email. For every friend that signs up, you both get an additional 250MB, making it well worth sharing your experiences. Paid for subscriptions are also available to upgrade your account to 50 or 100GB.

If you’re new to cloud computing, then I would recommend visiting dropbox.com and clicking on “Watch a Video” to find out more about the service.

3. QR Scanner

Available for iPhone and iPod Touch (4th generation)
Free

QR (Quick Response) Codes have really taken off in the last few months. Already hugely popular in Japan and the US, many high street retailers such as John Lewis have started to adopt the two dimensional code in their marketing activities, and libraries aren’t far behind. There are a plethora of apps that utilise the iPhone or iPod Touch’s auto focus camera. Out of the ones that I have tried, I prefer QR Scanner for its simplicity and clear design.

All you need to do is point the device at the code and then depending on what the code is, it will then launch the relevant app. In Settings, you can choose whether you want this function to be carried out automatically. Previous scans are stored for quick access later.

If you haven’t already explored QR codes and their relevance to the information sector, take a look at the universities of Bath and Huddersfield, that are deploying them in strategic places in order to enhance user education. How do you track their usage? I use bit.ly to shorten URLs which now automatically generates a QR code. This way, I can then receive the same realtime statistics that I’m already accustomed to. You will find a number of blog posts out there about the application of QR codes and their use in libraries. Once you know what they do and how they work, you’ll find them everywhere from library catalogues and email signatures to mugs and t-shirts. So get scanning!

4. News: Flipboard

Available for iPad
Free

There are some really good reader style apps available so this is a tough category to evaluate, but if all you want is a simple app to read blogs and RSS feeds, I would go no further than by downloading the aptly named Reeder (available for iPad (£2.99) and iPhone/iTouch (£1.79)). Its clean, uncluttered interface makes it great for keeping up with news and it also works really well with Google Reader. However, if you want a richer, social magazine experience, then check out Pulse News Reader (iPad (Free), or my particular favourite and Apple’s App of the Year – Flipboard. Both these apps allow you to view content from all your favourite websites incluing Twitter, Flickr and Facebook in a visually pleasing way.

You can share, comment and like in the same way as you would through the web versions, but Flipboard makes the whole thing easier and more fun. I love the way that selected status updates or tweets are pulled out as quotes and video and pictures load quickly within the app, which means you’re not taken off somewhere else.

Whilst I still use the original websites or their apps, it is often nice when taking a break from work to open Flipboard and just enjoy what is going on around me by flipping (as if through a magazine) the content posted by friends or contacts. So for emulating the style of the print format, Flipboard just has the edge for me.

5. Productivity: LogMeIn Ignition

Available for iPad/iPhone and iPod Touch
£17.99

I’ve been using desktop control software corporately for a number of years and now LogMeIn brings the power and flexibility of remote access to end users. How this app has saved my life once or twice? Having said how good Dropbox is, it doesn’t of course account for human error and if you forget to save that all important document before you leave your home in the morning, without a solution like LogMeIn you can be left stranded.

The app itself is one of the more expensive ones on the App Store. However, I feel that the ability to access all my files on my home Mac on the go makes this worth the price tag. I’ve even used it to render files or convert documents when I don’t have the relevant software installed on my work PC. It really comes into its own though when you use it to troubleshoot a relatives PC. I refered to my sister in law earlier, as a university student away from home she often runs into technical difficulty, with LogMeIn I’ve been able to resolve many of the issues within a matter of minutes. It’s just as well she trusts me!

The efficiency of the app does depend on the speed of your connection, although I find that on an average 3G network it works just fine – certainly on the iPad it can feel just like you’re sitting in front of your computer.

So there you are! I could go on but hopefully there is something here for everyone, whether you are new to the iOS platform, or like me have been enjoying the benefits of Apple’s foray into the smartphone/tablet market for a while.

When I met Mark Zuckerberg…

Facebook Masterclass

OK, so I lied! I didn’t actually meet Mark Zuckerberg, but I got your attention, right? I did however get the chance to recently visit Facebook HQ in London for a rare masterclass, organised by UK Online.

My employer (Solihull Libraries) was one of five prize winners, drawn at random from all the centres that had registered an event for Get Online Week. Although I’m not directly involved with delivering initiatives such as myguide, I am responsible for running the Solihull Libraries Facebook Page, so was delighted to have the opportunity to attend.

We were met in London and taken for lunch by Vicky Lawson, Communications Manager at UK Online before spending the afternoon at the Facebook offices situated just off Oxford Circus. It was a shame not to be given a tour, but as I understand it there isn’t much to see! This is because the London office mainly deals with sales and regional support. Sarah Abbott a member of the PR team at Facebook gave us a short presentation which covered Facebook’s development from a Harvard dormitory to 500 million monthly active users. No matter what your personal views about Facebook its success is staggering, some of the most interesting statistics from Sarah’s presentation were that:

• the 35 plus demographic is the fasting growing in the UK with 8.6 million users
• there are over 900 million objects that people interact with from pages, groups, events, etc.
• average users create 90 pieces of content per month
• more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month

Sarah covered the basic layout of the Facebook profile, the privacy settings and the difference between ‘Pages’ as opposed to a ‘Profile’. It was interesting to observe how some of the other prize winners were unsure about this, fearing that they needed to create two Facebook accounts to keep work and personal separate. After showing us examples of pages from a variety of brands it was time for us to have a go on some shiny Mac laptops (which naturally pleased me)!

I have to say that this masterclass would have been just what I needed a year ago. Having already set-up a page which I use on a daily basis there wasn’t anything I hadn’t already covered, although some of the hints and tips regarding continent were useful and focused my attention on more of the conversation, rather than the just the news giving element which you can easily get carried away with. It also highlighted the power of video and photos rather than just text.

I commend Facebook and UK Online for offering us the opportunity. I think we all left infused about the potential of using Facebook as a marketing tool and the afternoon did get me thinking about how to use Facebook for promotion of the library as a UK Online Centre, which after all was why I was sent there! I’ve now set-up an additional page and provided some training so that another member of staff can promote this aspect of the service using the social networking site.

I’ve also been exploring Facebook Places, the location-aware service which was rolled out in the UK in September and I’ve been busy adding our libraries.

It remains to be seen what impact this will have, but I’ve always felt that libraries need to be where people are, in the virtual as well as physical sense, and with 500 million monthly active users on Facebook, the small amount of time taken to claim an entry and populate it with the library’s details, seem worth it in the long run with the possible reward it presents in terms of raising our profile within communities.

I am keen to find out how other public libraries are using Facebook and in particular the new Places feature, so if you would like to share any thoughts or ideas, please leave a comment below.

Photos courtesy of Vicky Lawson (UK Online).

Stephen Booth in Solihull

In April I blogged about an event I was organising for Make a Noise in Libraries Fortnight.

To mark MANIL in Solihull we invited popular crime author Stephen Booth to join our Listeners’ Circle for conversation, coffee and cake.

MANIL is an annual campaign from RNIB to bring blind and partially sighted people and public libraries together.

You can hear what Stephen had to say about reading, libraries and his bestselling Cooper and Fry series of novels by downloading the podcast from the Solihull Libraries website.

The event was a great success and If you’re a fan of British crime fiction it is well worth a listen!

View a taster of the event on YouTube (below) or by a viewing some of the photos on Flickr.  

Libraries and location services: using Foursquare in public libraries

I’ve been meaning to seriously explore location-based social networks for a while now, and so this morning I finally took the plunge and registered with Foursquare. For those of you who are not familiar with the service, Foursquare is essentially a location-based game. However, to categorise it as a game doesn’t do the service justice, as I feel it presents a real opportunity for libraries to maintain their place as a community destination in a digital world.

How does it achieve that?

Foursquare essentially acts as a social guide to your area and rewards you for doing interesting things, one of which may be checking out your local public library! You can share places you’re visiting with friends, see where they are or have been, and create suggestions for their visit in the form of Tips and To Do Lists. Let me give you an example. You visit a restaurant and want to tell others about the service or recommend a particular dish. Foursquare enables you to Check-in (you can even add the venue if it doesn’t already exist) and leave comments. Every time you check-in somewhere you receive Points.

That’s just the basics, there’s more to Foursquare than that, you can also earn Badges for certain activities and become Mayor of a particular place if you frequent it the most. For a while now I had been noticing on Twitter that so and so had become Mayor of a certain area without realising what this was all about!

The great thing about Foursquare is the cross-platform compatibility, the fact that it has native apps for iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Palm. The mobile version should work with any phone with a web browser, and if you’re on the Vodafone network in the UK you can also use their SMS short code.

I was pleased to find out that Foursquare is gaining some momentum amongst librarians (particularly in the States). You’ll find several blog posts on the subject notably from David Lee King as well as a recent article in Library Journal by Melissa L. Rethlefsen entitled Checking In: Location Services for Libraries. These and the help section on the Foursquare website itself give an excellent overview and should be enough to get you started.

What have I done so far?

I’ve registered on Foursqaure through the iPhone app and I’ve added where I work (the Central Library in Solihull) as a venue.  Foursqaure offers support to businesses by asking you to confirm if you are the manager of the business. There’s a simple procedure to follow, you can either paste a link to your websites contact page or add a telephone number where you can be contacted.  I’m currently waiting to confirm ownership, but also see who else checks in. Once confirmation is complete you can create Specials and this is where I think it starts to get really interesting as you can manage promotions and offers. Confirming ownership of a venue unlocks the business dashboard allowing access to more information on visitors.

How can libraries utilise Foursquare?

Most of the blog posts make useful suggestions of how to use Foursqaure to your advantage, so here’s a summary of what they suggest with a few points of my own thrown in:

• To Do Lists – offer a real way in. You can suggest a number of library activities, from borrowing books (e.g. we’re currently promoting the Orange Prize Shortlist) through to using the internet.
• Tips – have the potential to capture customer comments. In the same way that I recently discovered some comments on our library via Google Maps, Foursquare is a natural place to comment on the service received and the resources provided.
• Offering weekly or monthly prizes to the Mayor. Helps represent wider library use – not just issues.
• Shout outs – short updates sent to Twitter and Facebook help to spread the word. So Foursquare can contribute to your regular viral marketing activities.

The above is just my understanding of the service from very limited use and a little wider reading. I would like to hear from other librarians contemplating using Foursquare and particularly from those who are currently using the service and its business dashboard.

What’s interesting is that Foursquare is about physical locations. Unlike some other Social Media services it promotes people getting out to venues but recording virtually, surely a great tool when promoting library services?

Make a Noise in Libraries 2010

Make a Noise in Libraries Fortnight 2010 (MANIL) will take place this year between 1-15 June. If you’re not familiar with MANIL, it’s an annual campaign from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) to “bring public libraries and blind and partially sighted people together to improve access to books and information”.

This year the theme is Conversation, Coffee and Cake. In Solihull we’ve invited crime author Stephen Booth (a great champion of public libraries) along for the morning on Wednesday 9 June. Stephen will primarily talk to our Central Library Listeners’ Circle, a group who meet regularly to choice, review and share their thoughts on books they’ve been listening to on cassette, CD and mp3.

We’re looking forward to hearing what they make of Stephen’s books which are all set in the beautiful Peak District.

The fortnight is a great opportunity to showcase accessible library services and to listen to what blind and partially sighted users want.

I would love to hear about what’s happening in other libraries around the UK to mark this occasion.

Wednesday

As I mentioned in Tuesday’s belated blog post, I created a new record this week for being late every single day.

Wednesday was okay though as we don’t open until 10am and my line manager was also stuck in traffic. But hang on a minute – weren’t we delivering some training today? We were expecting some fairly new members of staff from our community libraries for a session on information provision and our virtual library in less than 30 minutes time! I then started to panic thinking about all the things that Gary would have sorted out by now, projector, handouts, and probably a thousand and one other things. After cursing Travel West Midlands for a few seconds I started running around the building like a headless chicken getting things ready. I wasn’t helped by the fact that the power sockets weren’t working, as electricians were doing some work in the area where I was intending to present; I now needed to find a long extension lead. Thankfully, our ICT Librarian Cliff Lamb was on hand, and by the time the four members of staff arrived everything was just about set up. This meant that the PCs I had intended to use to demo the various packages weren’t available as well. Great! Thankfully, I had remembered to bring my 3G dongle.

There have been a lot of changes at the Central Library recently as a new meeting space is being created on the first floor, which means just about all the services are being repositioned. This meant competing against the sound of workmen nearby for most of the morning. Despite the odds, the session seemed to go down quite well and I even managed to break off to talk about Twitter!

Tuesday

Okay – so it’s Friday afternoon and I’m just sitting down to write Tuesday’s Library Day in the Life post! Can I actually remember what happened yesterday, let alone on Tuesday? Warning: this maybe quite brief and very uninteresting…

I’ve been late to work everyday this week (mostly traffic, public transport not turning up, etc.), and on Tuesday arrived just before we opened. Enough time to quickly check emails and to see if we had any new fans on our Facebook page overnight. I only set this up a couple of weeks ago, but it is steadily growing.

To be honest I was a bit down after Monday’s cancellation of the CILIP West Midland branch conference, so I was quite glad to find myself timetabled to work on enquiry desks for most of the day. I was worried how well the day was going to turn out after I was verbally abused for telling someone to stop shouting into his mobile phone. In the end an elderly woman came to my rescue and told the man where to go! I so wanted to do that.

Sadly, that was probably the highlight of what was otherwise a fairly quiet day!

Monday

Today marks the start of the Library Day in the Life project – round 4 which I blogged about recently, and for me that meant making a tough decision.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a member of the CILIP West Midland branch committee. At our last meeting a couple of weeks ago we agreed to review plans for a one-day conference we’re organising for 9 February which includes our AGM. Sadly, a poor response from members has meant that it is not viable to hold the event,  and so I spent the morning contacting speakers, the venue and fellow committee members with the news. This was hugely frustrating as I’ve personally spent the best part of the last year organising two events which I’ve now had to cancel – the other being our Web 2.0 Workshops.  So by 12pm I had sent a staggering 24 emails and made 11 phone calls (lets hope my boss isn’t reading this)!

The afternoon was spent with an hour on the enquiry desk, followed (after lunch) by a meeting to discuss IT, primarily within the Central Library. With the project to build new meeting rooms underway, we were looking at the number of PCs required in the new layout and how they can be best managed.

So a rather manic Monday to say the least. Our AGM is hopefully being rescheduled for March, more information will be available on the CILIP WM site shortly.

Library Day in the Life

Week commencing Monday 25 January sees the return of the Library Day in the Life Project – Round 4.

It was in fact this meme back in July which actually inspired me to start writing this blog. I’ve since found blogging a useful way of sharing what I am up to with others, and although I haven’t posted as much as I would have liked over the last few months, it is nonetheless something I’ve kept up since!

It’s a great way of finding out how colleagues spend their time, particularly those from other sectors and from overseas. But where it is of real benefit is to students contemplating a career within the library and information community, and I’ll certainly mention it to students at the University of Warwick when I attend the Careers Unlimited event on behalf of CILIP West Midlands next month. Library Day in the Life as a collection should offer a real insight into the world of a 21st century librarian.

So if you’re interested in taking part please visit the wiki and add your name to the growing list of library staff taking part.

Status Updates

Call me old-fashioned but I like to keep my social networks fairly separate.

I’ve been experimenting now with all kinds of social media for the last twelve months or so. Mainly Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more recently LinkedIn.

Twitter and LinkedIn announced a partnership back in early November allowing you to cross-post from both networks. Many of those I’m following did this and I too have followed suit.

I started using LinkedIn as it is a professional/business network (unlike Facebook which I mainly use for friends). I can connect with current and former colleagues to keep up to date with what they are doing. LinkedIn also presents a method of raising your own professional profile in terms of job opportunities, and in the short time I have been using LinkedIn I have found this to be the case.

However, I am slightly concerned about the amount of duplication. Although I see all my networks as a whole, I do like to view them separately, so find it quite frustrating to read what someone has just eaten for lunch, appearing in the Network Updates section of LinkedIn. When you link your accounts you have the option to send all tweets, or just those you tag with #in. I’ve noticed this happening a lot with Facebook as well.  Seeing @ replies and hashtags doesn’t feel right, or at least not to me. Or am I missing the point?

Basically I’m wondering if it dilutes the impact and effectiveness of that network or adds value to it. I would be interested to hear your views.