Mobility, Ubquity and Changing the Way We Do Business

For most of last year the UH Libraries has been conducting a pilot project where librarian were given or could borrow an iPod Touch to use as part of their work. Several librarians participated in the project using the devices on campus, at conferences and a variety of other places. As part of the project the oversight group conduct a survey of both people who used the devices and those who didn’t. In addition, we also interviewed 15 librarians about the project. Watching the interviews has been a real eye opener for me, in terms of how people work, want to work, and the barriers that the library creates to people being effective at their jobs.

One of the things that surprised me the most was how many librarians wanted the ability (but the not the expectation) of keeping in touch while they were away at conference. In addition, the need for flexibility in mobile technologies was also an important theme. Some participants favored the portability of an iPod Touch while other would have preferred a large screen and keyboard.

It was also interesting to see how many of the subject liasions spend a significant portion of their time outside the library. While this is in line with the theme of “going where users are” which is part of Library 2.0, libraries often aren’t equiping their liasions with devices to function in this work scenario. Also, being effective in meetings by having access to the appropriate information and being able to easily capture information like meeting notes also came up. Interviewees also seem to indicate that they weren’t always sure when they were going to need access but they did know when they’d arrived at a scenario where they wanted access.

I wonder sometimes if libraries are paying enough attention to these issues when it comes to mobile technologies. Most of the mobile efforts that I’ve seen at libraries thus far have been focuses on making library content, services and resources available to users with mobile devices. There seems to be little investigation going on into how the way deploying mobile technologies to library staff impacts our ability to serve users. Certainly deployment of mobile tech changes the nature of the relationships between librarians and faculty. Also there were occasions when it seemed that mobile tech changed the way in which librarians were able to collaborate with one another. Our pilot seemed to indicate that there are significant advantages and benefits to providing library staff with mobile technologies. As a result, more mobile devices will be deployed here over the next year. I hope that the library continues to examine the ways in which this technology changes the work of librarians and library staff.