Lots of things done today

A productive morning, mobile projects wise!

• Just submitted at possible workshop to the CoFHE / UC&R joint conference 2010 on mobile 'phone stuff.

• Pretty much finished an article I'm writing to complement a talk I've submitted to LILAC 2010 - if I do the talk, it'll be submitted to the Journal of Information Literacy (run by the same people as the conference, so only polite to give them first crack at it!).

• Done a draft version of the questionnaire I'll use to assess how the Text tips & tricks went (using a form in Google docs for that one). Also scheduled the last of the text tips and tricks to go out over the next couple of weeks.

Extreme makeover: Transforming the face of your Library Service

Here's the presentation I'm giving at the "Extreme makeover: Transforming the face of your Library Service" day in Leeds on 26th October.

QR codes, text a librarian and more...

View more presentations from Andrew Walsh.

My handout that goes along with it is below:

Handout for QR codes, text a librarian and more...

View more documents from Andrew Walsh.

Guest spot on UKOLN blog!

I was asked to do a guest spot on the UKOLN cultural heritage blog about the text a librarian service after they spotted my recent article in CILIP's Update magazine.

Duly done this weekend and straight up on their blog today!

Text tips and tricks

Just sent a "welcome" text message to the first group of people to sign up to our "Text Tips & Tricks" service (by texting HUDUNI LIB to 81025 - so nice and easy!)

Hopefully a few more people will sign up over the coming week, so I'll set up a second group / welcome message for them.

The first proper text message is due to go out on Monday (5th October), containing a link to a podcast describing what they can find on floor 4 (the entrance floor of the library). I'll then schedule the rest to go out over the coming weeks....

CLS poster promenade

Spent yesterday in our service's poster promenade showing off the work we're doing to both take advantage of text messaging in the library and the way we're starting to use QR codes.

Lots of interest, with a few people realising they had QR readers on their 'phone (Nokia 'phones) and lots of people amazed by their potential!

Story so far...

I've recently been investigating the use of mobile 'phones with our library, in particular for in teaching information literacy and just gave a talk at LILAC (Librarians Information Literacy Annual Conference) about it.

If they won't turn them off, we might as well use them. Using mobile ‘phones in information skills sessions.

View more presentations from guest905cbed.

One concrete service has come out of it so far, a text a librarian service for the University library.

However, I've just been given some money to introduce QR tags in the library with the intention of blurring some of the boundaries between the physical library and the mobile / online world. I've also been given a small award to introduce some mobile friendly materials onto our induction webpages and link them to a series of text messages that students would be able to sign up to in the first term at University.

This blog will be my attempt to keep track of what I've done and when (so I can write it up "officially" later!), plus what I think has worked and what hasn't.