The Mobile Web and the Mobile Websites of Libraries

I have given a talk at the 2012 Amigos Online Conference – Access by Touch: Delivering Library Services Through Mobile Technologies last Friday. Thanks to all who attended my session!

I won’t be really write any post on my blog on this until I come back from the ALA Annual Conference. But I wanted to share the slides for now. And for those who rather prefer words than slides, here is the super-short summary of my talk.

• We are moving into the era of the Mobile Web which is now a competitor to the Desktop Web.
  (If you haven’t heard about the Mobile Web, it’s a good time for you to do now!)
• The user behavior on the Mobile Web is significantly different from that in a few years ago already.
• The new mantra for the Mobile Web is “Don’t Dumb Things Down on Mobile.”
• In the last few years, library mobile Web sites have been changing slowly but with some definite trend. The trend is more and more support for the use of library resources and account transactions on the mobile itself as one of the primary tasks on a library’s mobile Website.
• So my recommendation is:
  • If you library doesn’t have a mobile site yet, build one.
    (In the poll I did, 70% of my audience reported that their libraries do not yet have a mobile website.)
  • Ensure discoverability
    : If your library has a mobile site, please enable redirect (either auto or with a choice) to the mobile version so that a user can discover your mobile site in the most perfect context, i.e when they are getting to your library website on their mobile.
  • Then think about updating your mobile site in keeping with the recent trend of the Mobile Web.

I am also chairing the Mobile Computing IG meeting at the 2012 ALA Annual Conference.
So if you are interested and will be at Anaheim, come by to the meeting!

Slides: The Mobile Web and the Mobile Websites of Libraries: How They Changed for the Last Few Years