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The Wireless Future of Library Computing: Implications of Docomo Cell Phones by Karl Bridges

"Libraries, while recognizing the growth of laptop usage and responding to it, have neglected the importance of development of an even more significant tool: the cellular phone. There are a variety of reasons for these attitudes - many of them grounded in a desire to keep the library environment, especially noise levels, at manageable levels. This is a commendable attitude, but, despite the reservations of many librarians, libraries need to adapt to these new technologies. To do otherwise is to risk becoming behind technologically as well as marginalized in terms of the university environment and society as a whole....

The real issue here is understanding the concept of how people will collect and use information. While it seems clear that there isn't one dominant paradigm for this usage to date has fallen into one of several patterns. One of these dominant patterns is one that might be characterized as "research, copy, and dump" They collect the information by taking notes and then copy that information into the computer for final processing. Another model can be called the 'Online Processing model' where the information is collected online and then processed. The obvious problem with this model is that students, primarily, tend to rely on the electronic materials to the detriment of the use of valuable printed sources. This 'Online Processing' model has also tended to destroy the use of the 'research, copy, and dump' model since, once again, students prefer to use the electronic resources.

These usage patterns have reflected the technological paradigm that has dominated the library community. To some extent the growth of computing has not been accompanied by a corresponding growth in the ability of users to extract information from printed materials for use in an electronic environment. The amount of textual materials online, including both commercially available resources and other converted printed materials, represents a small fraction of the entire corpus of printed materials. The end result of this situation has been an entire body of literature dealing with the question of whether libraries have a future, is the book dead, etc. Librarians have failed to recognize that the devices they despise are the source of their salvation....

The question then becomes what libraries need to do in order to more effectively approach this coming trend.

The key to success is planning. Libraries need to recognize the coming convergence and response proactively rather than, as in the present case of cell phones, reactively. The use of handheld computers needs to be recognized and supported as a valid form of computing. Ideally, this recognition would be at the highest possible level of the organization so that standards could be developed. More to the practical, there needs to be an effort to ensure that there are practical supports for handheld computing users comparable to PC users such as software download pages, help pages, etc.

Libraries also need to adopt policies which are handheld computing friendly. Given the coming convergence of the handheld computing and the cellular phone current restrictions on cell phone usage are going to become increasingly an issue. This will require the development of new social norms and more flexibility on the part of librarians. In reality, the people most sensitive to noise in libraries are probably the librarians.

Libraries also need to recognize the use of handheld computing devices when doing such things as web page development or purchasing new online catalogs. Many vendors are beginning to support the use of handheld computers, such as wireless beaming of search results from the OPAC to the device, in their products. This issue needs to be raised and followed through from the initial request for proposal to the installation and operation of the product. For those with current OPAC installations its important to be asking the vendor when and if such support for handheld computers will be made available.

The same advice applies for individual database vendors. The support for handheld computers, especially in terms of the ability to download materials, varies widely if it exists at all. Sadly, some major vendors, such as Netlibrary, seem not to be hurrying to provide support for use of these devices. However, there are other places, such as www.aportis.com/library/ and the Electronic Text Center of the University of Virginia etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html which do provide fairly substantial collections of electronic texts available for download and use on handheld computers such as Palm. In addition, there are various software packages available which make it possible to view documents in Portable Document Format or Microsoft Word format. In sum, while the current availability of text materials is limited it can be expected to grow at a large pace over the next several years." [LIS News]

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