Earlier today, we held the ALA TechSource Workshop Gadgets in the Library: A Practical Guide to Personal Electronics for Librarians with Jason Griffey. We’re following up with a few of the questions asked during the presentation that we felt merited further discussion: Jason will be part of the discussion as well!
- How accessible are tablet and mobile devices for people with disabilities? Is there a particular manufacturer that stands out?
- How are libraries handling the problems posed by multiple users using these personal devices - for example clearing an iPad in between users to ensure patron privacy and securing content, etc.?
- Are there shortcuts for building a mobile app for your library, or companies that cater to the library market?
You can also chime in on Twitter. The hashtag is #libgadgets
Links to Resources that Jason Mentioned today:
Devices
http://www.google.com/phone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices
Management
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/business/integration/
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/10/bring-your-phone-to-work-day-managing.html
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/04/putting-android-to-work-for-your.html
Development
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/developing-apps-for-ios-sd/id395631522
http://developer.android.com/index.html
http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/
Reader Apps to check out
iBooks (Apple iBookstore & PDFs)
Google Books (Google Books online)
Kindle (Amazon Kindle store)
Instapaper (web text)
ComicZeal4 (comics)
Inkling (textbooks)
KoboHD (Kobo books)
Nook (Barnes & Noble books)
Goodreader (All sorts of documents, does PDF Annotation)
The preliminary readings for this workshop were:
Jason Griffey, Gadgets and Gizmos: Personal Electronics and the Library, Chapters 1 and 2: http://alatechsource.metapress.com/content/u2w721l2m73u/
The Enterprise Deployment Guide for iOS: http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/enterprise/
Buffy Hamilton's blog entries about rolling out Kindles: http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/category/kindle/
Meredith Farkas’ Fine Print: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/practice/read-fine-print
Jason Griffey, blog post on DRM: http://jasongriffey.net/wp/2010/08/25/ebooks-filetype-and-drm/
Jason’s Slides: