By Ben Showers October 11, 2011
learning and teaching, libraries, mobile, technology, tools, web 2.0
#jiscmlib, #mlibs

As part of the Mobile Infrastructure for Libraries programme I am pleased to announce that 6 new projects have recently received funding, with projects starting in November and finishing in August 2012.

The majority of the projects are innovating around library content and services to develop prototypes for the innovative delivery of scholarly content and library services.  The projects will also be producing rich case studies documenting their work and the lessons learnt.

There is also a community support project that will aim to build a body of evidence and practice around the notion of m-libraries and the provision of services and content to mobile devices.

The support project will also help support, build and engage this community of practitioners both within the programme and beyond.

I will be updating the Emerging Library Opportunities webpage shortly with details of the programme.  Until then, here are some brief details of the projects:

Supporting the Mobile Library Community
Evidence Base (Birmingham City University)
Partners: Owen Stephens

This project will provide a mobile library community support project to help support and engage the emerging m-library community by reviewing and synthesising existing research and  evidence-based guidance.

PhoneBooth
London School of Economics
Partners: Edina

PhoneBooth will repurpose the Charles Booth Maps, Descriptive of London Poverty and selected police notebooks, which record eye-witness descriptions of London street-by-street, for delivery to mobile devices. The project will enhance the current online delivery by enabling content to be delivered directly to the location to which it refers.

MACON: Mobilising Academic Content Online
The Open University
Partners: EBSCO

MACON will address challenges involved in delivering quality academic content to mobile devices in a seamless and user-friendly manner. The project will work with EBSCO, a major content and systems provider in order to prototype a mobile friendly resource discovery interface which will discover and expose quality academic content from both third party & local collections.

M-Biblio
University of Bristol

The project will enhance the learning and research activities of the University of Bristol’s academic community by developing a mobile application that can record and organise references to books, journals and other resources. These references can be added actively by scanning barcodes and QR codes, or passively by automatically recording RFID tags in items being used for study and research.

Mobiles and Public Electronic Displays (MoPED)
City University, London

The project will develop the MoPED system, which will combine mobile phone interaction with a public display in City University’s Main Library. The aim of the
project is to investigate how to encourage the adoption of mobile services through a two-fold strategy: first, a strong, user-centred design process, commencing with an
investigation of which mobile services are most likely to be beneficial; second, using an in-situ public display to promote (and assist getting access to) the library’s mobile services and to connect online services to the space of the library itself.

Learnmore Mobile App
City University, London

The project will develop the Learnmore Mobile Application using a user-centred design process. Building on the current ‘desktop’ Learnmore content, the interface
and content will be tailored to the actual needs of students using mobile devices, with considerations including the preferred media, topic and content size for mobile
consumption.