Mobile interface for Cambridge Libraries

Today sees the Beta launch of Camlib, a mobile interface for Cambridge libraries. It has been tested with iPhone, iPod Touch and Android devices (revision: apparently it's also working on Opera Mini browser on Blackberry).

Link to interface: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/mob/camlib.cgi
Link to info: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/toolbox/camlib.html

Much of the new functionality is linked to log-in - those without a Cambridge Library account can log in with our test user (using library barcode login):

Barcode:VABCD
Surname: BLOGGS

[NB please use Mr Bloggs to explore CamLib, but refrain, if possible, from making any requests under his name ...]

CamLib is developed from the Cambridge Libraries Widget, with extra functionality and lots of bells and whistles thrown in. It's written in jQTouch, a JQuery library which gives the look and feel of a native app in a web interface.

We thought long and hard about what people were likely to want out of a mobile library interface, and came up with Bookbag, a new piece of functionality which allows you to build a list of items from your searches then email it to yourself (or anyone else for that matter). Viewing content on a smartphone can be difficult, and nobody wants to be copying classmarks from phone to paper - BookBag allows you to discover now, and consume at your leisure.

CamLib also links out to full text and Google Books (where available), though we can do nothing about the mobile-friendliness (or otherwise) of external sites. It will link out to Google Maps (or a floorplan in the case of the University Library) to help you locate items. On iPhone/iPod Touch there is a neat tie-in with the inbuilt mapping functionality which allows you to use the Directions button to find out how long it will take to walk to your book! (untested on Android)

Otherwise, it does everything the widget does - view and renew loans - place, view and cancel requests - view library profile etc.

CamLib builds on the ideas, work and concepts that have emerged from the Arcadia Project - indeed, a mobile interface was one of Arcadia Fellow Tony Hirst's direct recommendations. In this sense it still counts as an "Arcadia Product", even though the project is now being funded by JISC!

The 'perpetual beta' textbook

Interesting post in iMedical Apps. Excerpt:

However, while renting textbooks may seem like a strange and wondrous departure for those of us who still pridefully maintain shelves of outdated medical textbooks, the more necessary revolution will actually be upending the illusion of completion when a textbook finally reaches the printing press.

By this, I am suggesting the barrier between finished textbooks and the rapidly evolving nature of medical knowledge most certainly needs to be more porous. Going even further, the interactive and non-linear nature of learning are at odds with the centuries-old format of a linear, immutable text.

This is not to say that textbooks are anachronisms. Something very valuable comes out of the care and scrutiny of an author polishing each paragraph and page with great care. But, why should the craftsmanship stop at the moment of publication?

Why indeed? I was thinking of this when reading the New Yorker's recent profile of Paul Krugman and the account therein of his struggles to complete an economics textbook.

iPhone Apps for researchers

iPhone Apps that might be relevant to researchers:

Evernote
Evernote, which started out as a simple note taking tool, is now a solid information manager that can handle everything from voice notes to clippings pulled from the web. The beauty of Evernote is its versatility. You can use it to collect notes from meetings and whiteboards directly to mobile devices, adding voice memos for better clarity. It can make one more efficient, especially with its ability to sync with all the different devices on which I'm running Evernote. Take a note on iPhone/iPodTouch, and it gets automatically synced to home desktop, laptop, netbook, and work PC.
Price: Free
URL: http://www.evernote.com/

Papers
A bit like Mendeley. Bills itself (as Mendeley does) as "iTunes for research literature". Just as iTunes lets you sync your music with your iPod - the Papers app now has a companion app for the iPhone/iPod Touch that allows you to sync your collected journal papers. You can keep copies of all or some of your research papers on your mobile device for quick reading and reference. The built in pdf reader on the Papers app does the job comfortably and can be handled with versatile touch gestures. Papers also features "beaming" where users can send a pdf to another user or sync their library with a desktop wirelessly.
Price: $9.99
URL: http://mekentosj.com/papers/iphone/


PubSearch Plus
PubSearch Plus gives you the ability to search PubMed from the comfort of your iPhone or iPod Touch, and lets you read and email selected publications. Though the iPhone screen isn't ideal for viewing high resolution images in research papers, it definitely helps when you're looking up a specific piece of information from a particular paper. The app also supports EZProxy so you can connect to journals that are available only through institutional access.
Price: $1.99
URL: http://www.deathraypizza.com/deathraypizza/iPhone.html

ArXiv on iPhone

Yvonne pointed me to this.

The arXiv preprint server gives you access to over a half million articles on physics, mathematics, computer science, and more. ArXiview is your portal on the iPhone to this wealth of information.

Features:
* Browsing arXiv categories by date. Keep up to date not just on the latest days posting, but postings from the last week or any date you wish. The first iPhone arxiv browser to offer full date browsing.
* Search the arXiv by author, title, full text, with and without restrictions to specific categories of the arXiv.
* Save preprints to your iPhone for later, offline browsing. Organize your offline readings in self-named folders.
* Email yourself or others preprint information for later reference.
* Read PDFs in both landscape and portrait mode.
* Arrange arXiv categories and subcategories in an order of your preference, for quick access.

I've downloaded it (at a cost of 59p!) and installed on my iPod Touch. Will report on what it's like to use when I have a chance.

The content area is fascinating but pretty specialised. But it's made me think that a really nice Arcadia project would be to develop a more general iPhone App that would do something useful for the Science Portal. Or perhaps there's a neat App for medical information?

Why Kindle is worth watching

An excerpt from my Observer column this morning...

When it comes to technology futures, we're all drunks, always looking in the wrong place. Take mobile web browsing. Once we were all agreed that accessing the web via the tiny screen of a mobile phone was a non-starter, no matter what the networks said. The screens were simply too small to read a web page with any comfort. Mobile web browsing would not take off until larger-sized portable displays appeared on the market. QED.

Then Apple launched the iPhone, which like all phones, has a small screen. But it also came with some fiendishly clever software which enabled the user to expand the size of text displayed by its browser by simply pinching the image. And it also had an accelerometer which could sense the orientation of the device, so that if you turned the phone on to its side you got the web page displayed in landscape format. Suddenly it became perfectly possible to read web pages on a mobile device. The solution, it turned out, lay in software, not hardware. We were looking in the wrong place.

Same story with so-called eReaders - portable devices that store text and display it on screens. For a long time, our attention was focused on the properties of the screen. How easy was it to read in different kinds of lighting? What was the contrast like at difference angles of view? And so on. The market for eReaders was dominated by Sony, traditionally a manufacturer of neat consumer goods.

And then Amazon.com launched Kindle, its own take on the eReader. Technically, it was inferior to - and clunkier than - the Sony device. But Kindle took the US market by storm, especially after it was endorsed by Oprah Winfrey. And the secret of its success? Simple: it's a wireless device that is permanently online via a mobile phone subscription bundled into the purchase price. So getting a new book on to the Kindle is a breeze: click a button to log into your Amazon account; choose a book; hit the "Order" button and in a couple of minutes there's a new book on your device...