On 18/09/2007, Stephens, Owen <o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
> Although I agree that 'live data' using wireless access in the stacks
> would be good, I'm not sure this is as easy as some have suggested. My
> experience of putting wireless networks into libraries is that they
> don't reach half as far as you'd like, and book stacks are particularly
> problematic. Even if this proves less of a problem than I think, we are
> definitely a little way from easily available, cheap, pervasive wireless
> access yet, so there is still a potential 'offline' market when talking
> about portable devices.
Mmm. I think it's a long-term likelihood, but I wouldn't want to roll
it out tomorrow! We're lucky here in that our library is fairly
open-plan, and fairly well provided with coverage, partly through
adjoining buildings.
> Finally, coming back to the online version - with interfaces like the
> iPhone where you can zoom in etc to the bit of the page you want, is
> there still a need for specific web interfaces for mobile devices?
Yes. For "proper internet devices" - let's class them as capable of
heavy thinking and having a wireless connection - zooming and whatnot
is fine, so you can make do with a normal view. Things like javascript
can still mess up the browser, though - most catalogs don't have this
sort of thing, thank goodness, but there's always a chance someone's
being fancy with java ;-)
The second class of mobile devices is people using a web interface on
a lower-grade mobile phone with a data connection, which is a) more
expensive; and b) substantially slower (think mid-1990s dialup). You
really, really want a stripped-down service if you plan to have it
accessible in this way, feeding plain text and links, and not much
else.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray_at_dunelm.org.uk
Received on Wed Sep 19 2007 - 05:28:17 EDT