Mobile Library Services: Best Practices [Paperback]

Just as Andrew Carnegies support changed the landscape of public libraries in America, Apples launch of the iPhone on June 29, 2007 forever altered how people expected to interact with services. Libraries, like every other kind of organization, must now make their servicesnot just their catalogsavailable on an array of mobile devices.

Mobile Library Servicesprovides 11 proven ways to reach out to mobile users and increase your librarys relevance to their day-to-day lives. Librarians detail how they created mobile apps to how they went mobile on a shoestring budget. Written by public, academic, and special librarians, these 11 best practices offer models for libraries of every type and size.

Charles Harmon is an Executive Editor for the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. His background includes work in special, public, and school libraries.

Michael Messina is a reference librarian at the State University of New Yorks Maritime College. He has also worked as a researcher at The Brooklyn Academy of Music Archives. The former publisher of Applause Theatre & Cinema Books/Limelight Editions, he is a coeditor of Acts of War: Iraq and Afghanistan in Seven Plays (Northwestern University Press).

This volume contains 11 chapters contributed by 23 practicing librarians in public and academic settings. Offering examples from around the U.S., the contributors discuss specific applications for mobile-library services as well as activities such as scavenger hunts and library tours. Whether readers work in a public or academic library looking to go mobile, or they are seeking ideas for specific apps to create or implement, they will find that this book covers the topic in a user-friendly and approachable manner, with examples drawn from experience. Each chapter includes references, and there is an index. This book will inspire and support the integration of mobile technologies on all scales into academic and public libraries. Booklist