Todd Grappone
Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and IT
University of California, Los Angeles

Solving informational problems for users is a core idea at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library. This requires an understanding of how users operate (user research), the interactions they prefer (ux/ui), and the needed expertise to build the interactions for the devices they use (mobile/web). Numerous mobile apps for higher education have been developed over the years, and these products have been extremely popular with campus administrations and libraries, as well as with students and faculty. UCLA Library stepped into this marketplace with a different approach to development than most of the other offerings. The UCLA Library Simul8 team of developers is made up exclusively of students. The benefit of a team of student developers is twofold: first, user research is implicit within the group, since the developers themselves can inform the app development; second, the students tend to have familiarity with the latest programming languages for web/mobile apps, so the skill sets are more available.

This session will discuss the principles behind the formation of the group, the start-up culture of development, the tools and infrastructure utilized, and how projects are created and brought to fruition.

Presentation Slides

This update from CNI Associate Director Joan Lippincott includes a discussion of mobile technologies, including a brief discussion of the roundtable discussion that took place at CNI’s Spring 2012 Membership Meeting.  CNI Director Clifford Lynch talks about a workshop on the future of the Web.

Some examples of interesting applications of use of mobile devices mentioned in Joan’s report:

• Leafsnap is an electronic field guide being developed by researchers from Columbia U., U. MD, and the Smithsonian that uses visual recognition software to help identify tree species from photographs of their leaves; it is a free mobile app.
  http://leafsnap.com/
• Wearable devices are one of the trends we are watching.  Take a look at the video on Project Glass developed at Google.  It shows someone wearing goggle-type glasses on which all kinds of information and interactions are displayed as you follow the narrator through his day.
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c6W4CCU9M4
• If you’d like to explore some cutting edge music/art, try Cellphonia, where you can participate in sound/video installations or listen to new forms of opera.  Check out this webpage from Scot Gresham-Lancaster, a pioneer of computer network music.
  http://cellphonia.org/

Joan also mentioned a Pew Internet & American Life study, which you can access at http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Just-in-time.aspx?src=prc-newsletter

We hope you enjoy this program and we welcome your feedback.  For questions or comments related to CNI Conversations, please contact CNI Associate Executive Director Joan Lippincott at joan@cni.org.

The SCARLET project is pioneering augmented reality (AR) using mobile devices to enhance students’ use of special collections (SC) in libraries; bringing SCs into the age of the app. AR enables students to simultaneously experience the magic of primary materials while enhancing the learning experience by “surrounding” the object with digitized content. Learning and teaching is embedded at the heart of this innovative project, ensuring the focus remains on the student experience and not the technology. The session will describe current work to evaluate AR’s effectiveness in different student groups and suggest other subject areas where this methodology may benefit learning.

Presentation (PowerPoint)

The North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries is accelerating efforts to improve mobile access to library services and collections; this presentation will focus on two recent mobile library projects. The NCSU Libraries Mobile Web site was recently upgraded to support a wide range of mobile devices, and includes new service offerings such as interactive chat reference, mapping of library locations, and access to webcam feeds. WolfWalk is a pilot project that uses geotagging and geolocation to improve discovery and access of library special collections on mobile devices. The presentation will describe the near term opportunities and challenges of implementing library services for a mobile context.

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/m/about

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/wolfwalk/

PowerPoint Presentation