This review has been written for GearZap who sent me a complimentary sample product to test from their iPad Accessories.

I have to be honest, I was very intrigued about the Pocket Boom. As someone who usually listens to music via headphones it’s not necessarily something I had a huge need for, but I did think it could come in handy when travelling (i.e. in hotel rooms). So what it is?

Well, it’s basically a portable speaker system but as the name suggests it’s pocket sized. It’s battery powered (needs 2xAAA) and connects to any standard headphone connection – I tested it out using my iPhone as this is what I usually use to listen to music. You just connect it to the device (in this case my iPhone), attach the other end to a solid surface, and turn the power on.

What makes it such a clever product is that you can attach it to pretty much any solid surface and it will amplify the music by vibration. Depending on the surface chosen it will result in a slightly different sound, and it’s good to experiment. It’s a sticky foam pad so should be able to stick to most surfaces, not just on horizontal surfaces. I quite like the sound produced when it’s attached to the side of one of our drawer units.

One problem I do have with it is I get quite a lot of feedback from using my phone which is a pain. I also have to confess that despite having it for a couple of months now I keep forgetting to take it with my when I travel, so it’s clearly not yet become part of my essential travel kit. I’ll try to remember to take it with me the next couple of time and see if I use it. I wonder if it may also be a useful way to include music in my training sessions so will also give it a go for this next time I have opportunity to do so.

So would I recommend it? I probably would given the relatively low price point, though it’s not blown me away. It’s certainly an easy way to play music, and extremely portable. I’m by no means a music expert so I can’t really comment on the quality of the output but it’s certainly better than playing it through my iPhone speakers. It gets distorted when on full volume on my iPhone but that may be the fault of the iPhone (or the surface). It’s definitely a talking point too, and I can imagine it would be good fun at social gatherings.

It’s coming up to the holiday season, and I know a number of people are considering getting a Kindle. There have been quite a few questions on Twitter and interesting conversations with both Kindle owners and those thinking of getting one. I noticed however that some features of the Kindle that I mentioned were unknown to some other Kindle owners, so I thought I’d share a few tips about the way I use my Kindle that you might not know about.

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I’ve recently been trying out a new case* for my Kindle, one that also came with a light. Reading on my Kindle is mainly done in bed as I’m trying to get to sleep, so it’s important for me to be able to hold it comfortably lying down and be able to read it in the dark. I do have a bedside lamp but I’ve been wanting to try a Kindle light for a while; partly so that it is less distracting for my partner as I wouldn’t have to have the bedside lamp on, and also as when I stay in hotels it’s sometimes not possible to read as there is no bedside lamp.

The Tuff-Luv Spark Kindle Case with Light (Purple) is a funky looking case; I love the colour and the feel of the leather is really good. The light is very compact – you can store it within the spine of the case when the case is closed so it doesn’t take up any extra room.

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If you read my earlier post on my experience with a Kindle, you may be somewhat surprised to learn that I now own one. I didn’t exactly love it when I borrowed one last year. However, I came to realise that I was trying to turn it into something which is was not. It’s not a multi-functional device, and it’s unfair to compare it with one – it’s not a competitor of the iPad. But it is a great reading device.
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I’ve been meaning to get round to writing this blog post for so long but work projects and Christmas have taken over my life somewhat recently (I also think I’ve been putting it off because writing about it might make me want one even more!). I borrowed an iPad for just over a week (thank you BCU eLibrary team!) and I loved it. Unlike my experience with the Kindle, everything I tried to do on the iPad just worked or was even easier than I had expected. I’m going to try not to let the shiny shiny aspect of it overtake my thoughts though and give an objective view of what I liked and didn’t like about the iPad. NB: I wrote about the iPad as a reading device as a guest blog post for the eLibrary team, but this post is about the device more generally.

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One of the things that has stood out for me so far in my new job is the vast amount of reading I now have. I’ve always used the commute to and from work to read (study modules for my diploma, journal articles, reports, work related reading etc.), and tended to prefer to read these on paper than on screen. But in this job the volume of reading is a lot higher, and I was conscious of the amount of paper I was using (and also having to carry around between home and work), so I wondered if an e-reader might be a better way of doing things.

I do read a fair bit on my iPhone but I’d never tried a dedicated e-reader. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to borrow a Kindle for a couple of days thanks to BCU eLibrary team. I had a couple of days of travelling so knew I’d be spending a lot of time on the train, so I decided to use the opportunity to see if the Kindle suited my needs.

As some of you may be aware (particularly those of you who follow my tweets), I had a mixed experience with it. I thought I’d share the main pros and cons from my experience as I know there are others wondering about getting a Kindle at the moment. Read the rest of this entry »

UK Library Blog wiki

For a while now, I’ve been helping Jennie (and Phil and Christine) administer the UK Library Blogs wiki with up-to-date details of blogs from the UK biblioblogosphere (i.e. library related blogs). It includes institutional blogs as well as personal blogs from all sectors in the information profession. The number of blogging (and microblogging) librarians in the UK seems to keep increasing, although there are some blogs that are now defunct, and a number that have chosen to change blogging platforms or converge multiple blogs into one. The wiki is a really useful resource (so please spread the word!), but there’s more that can be done now with the gathered blogs.

Yahoo Pipes to aggregate RSS

Last year Jennie copiously checked all the entries again, updated them, and produced a Yahoo Pipe for all the institutional blogs. This outputs as an RSS feed so that you can subscribe to which will pull in all the blog posts from institutional library blogs in the UK. Thanks to a conversation last week on Twitter, Gary Green volunteered to produce a pipe for the librarian blogs, although due to the large number of blogs this is currently running a little slowly.

Google Custom Search Engine

I still felt there was more which could be done with this list of blogs to utilise all the useful information within them. For example, wouldn’t it be great if you could see what UK librarians are saying about a certain topic (perhaps what they have written about CILIP, or what they think of the new iPad)? Or search across all the library blogs to see the sorts of things being discussed in library blogs for a specific subject or topic (e.g. to see what their vacation opening hours are like at a glance, or to see what libraries are doing with QR codes)?

After feeling inspired by a chapter in Nicole Engard’s Library Mashups book, I decided a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) might be a useful tool to use. There are a lot of blogs on the wiki so it took a day or so of playing, but I have now added all the blogs (both current and abandoned if they are still live) to create a UK Library/Librarian blogs Google CSE (accessed from this link or by searching below).

I’ve tagged the blogs with different categories (this is done by adding different categories in the Refinements section of the CSE control panel), so that you can refine the search to only include Librarian blogs (usually individual, although there are some group blogs), Library blogs (usually institutional), or Supplier/Industry blogs. As you can see in the screenshot below, it’s just a case of performing the search, and then using the refinements to narrow the search down further.

I’d appreciate feedback at this stage, so please try it out and let me know what you think – is this something worth developing further? Would you find it useful? I’m not sure how Google manages the algorithms for the search, so I don’t know how reliable or useful the search results will be, but I’d appreciate it if people could test it out and letting me know if this sort of thing might be useful.

The future?

I’m happy to include the search box on Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, but am also considering using the Blogroll to Google CSE WordPress plugin which was developed for Libraries Interact to list australian library blogs and can be used as both a custom search engine and also to list and link to all the included blogs. This is relatively easy to administer, especially when compared to the Google CSE which seems a little flaky once a large number of sites are added. I might experiment with this plugin anyway, but would appreciate feedback in the comments, or by email on whether people think this would be useful?

By the way – if you are a UK library/librarian blogger and your blog is not included, please let me know and I’ll add it to both the wiki and the search engine.

A little while ago, I was involved in a very interesting discussion about utilising newer mobile technologies within libraries which began on Twitter (with @ijclark, @aarontay, @ostephens, and @chriskeene) and sparked experimentation and further discussion in the office.

1. Using your mobile phone as a library card

The first idea was prompted by this blog post from Aaron Tay. It introduces the Cardstar app, which allows users to enter their loyalty/membership card details into their iPhone (they are also developing an Android and Blackberry version) and use the barcode on their phone instead of their cards. I’d seen this in the App Store but hadn’t thought about its potential for library cards, but it seems some libraries have already started using it in this way.

Initially I was a little unsure about this as a colleague raised concerns that there was no way to check the identity of the owner. However, it was then pointed out that many public library cards have no photo ID and even libraries that do have photo ID on the card often have a self issue option so in theory anyone who found a lost card could use it to borrow material. As an aside, I later found out that our self issue machines could have added functionality to ask users for their PIN before allowing access to the account, which would overcome these problems (so long as the PIN was not recorded on the card of course and only given to the cardholder upon proof of identity – at my place of work we email the PIN so that only the true cardholder can get this information).

Anyway – on to the fun part! I decided to test the app to see if it would work with our systems. It took a bit of configuring (many thanks to Ben our systems guru!), but I eventually got my barcode on there and it worked! I tested it on my own PC and the issue counter (CCD barcode scanners), both of which worked fine, but I couldn’t get it to work on the self issue machines. I later discovered that this was because the self issue machines use laser scanners which can struggle to read barcodes from the iPhone as the surface is too reflective.

As Aaron points out – whether or not we encourage this app, we need to be aware of it as our tech savvy users may start using it and we will have to be aware of it and know our institution’s policy (which will likely depend on security measures currently used).

2. Using QR codes in libraries

We got chatting in the office about these sort of new technologies (I have an iPhone, my colleague has an Android phone), and the discussion turned to QR codes (watch this YouTube video for an introduction if you’re not familiar with QR codes),which you may have seen on products recently. Below is a QR code which should direct you to the homepage of the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, try it out on your mobile (you’ll need a QR reader which are available for most camera phones, just google the model and QR reader):

QR codes are already appearing in some library OPACs. We decided to have a play, and created some QR codes to redirect to particular areas of our website. We tested it on both our phones with success, and then began thinking about possible applications for this. Some things I thought about were (not an extensive list, these are just some very simple ideas):

• Including the QR code to electronic books/journals on the shelf near print books/journals which have an electronic equivalent
• Including QR codes of useful websites/online reports/resources near the print stock (e.g. curriculum, education/health reports)
• Including QR codes of relevant sections to our website at appropriate places in the building (e.g. to get up-to-date instructions for using equipment/facilities, or online bookings if we had them)
• Using QR codes instead of URLs on guides/tipsheets and for advisors to share with users who have enquiries. This could maybe be developed to be included on clothing, like QRazystuff are planning. Many libraries use t-shirts for those helping with enquiries – maybe these could include QR codes to commonly accessed sections on the website?

I really enjoyed finding out more about these technologies. I think it’s really exciting to think about the future of libraries – both with the technologies such as QR codes, RFID and who knows what next; and also about innovative ways to develop our resources and services. There’s so much more to be done and it’s a great time to be part of the profession – I love keeping up-to-date on all the latest ideas from different areas (globally now, thanks to the improved online communication channels) and investigating their potential within MPOW (my place of work). I don’t know if either of these ideas in particular are going to become something that we use within MPOW at the moment, but the potential is there and it was really good to test the feasibility and see if it’s a viable prospect. There are a lot of ways we can definitely improve, and I’ll certainly be mentioning these ideas with other colleagues.

I’d be interested to hear if anyone is currently using either of these ideas or something similar, or if there are other similar uses we hadn’t considered? Please let me know in the comments.

With a number of people having (or looking for) new mobile phones for Christmas or in the January sales, and people reflecting on the technological advances of the last decade (ignoring the debate about whether or not we’re actually in a new decade!), I’ve read a few blog posts recently about the great features of mobile devices and how useful they are. All this talk about mobile devices reminded me of a blog post I’ve been intending to write for a while so here it is.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I splashed out on an iPod Touch just over 2 years ago, and commented then on how mobile technologies were likely to affect both libraries and services in general in the future. I also wrote a series of posts about how to utilise some of the apps – some of which probably need updating but are still of use. I loved my iPod Touch but missed being able to use it when not in a wireless zone (particularly during my commute to work), and finally caved in earlier this year and bought myself an iPhone. I can now be usually found tapping away lost in the world of my iPhone (sad but true, I even started writing this blog post on my iPhone using the WordPress app as I was struggling to sleep). I use lots of different apps every day for my personal and work life, and find it invaluable when visiting new places (using maps, guides and useful transport apps to get about). I also use the web browser a lot, and many weekends now I don’t actually turn my laptop on at all and just stay connected via my iPhone.

I use it at work a lot – it has my Remember The Milk to do list application, and I can use it to check my email when I’m away from my desk. I also occasionally use it to access our OPAC (sadly not currently optimised for mobile browsers), and find this particularly useful when I’m in the shelves and not near an OPAC (e.g. when weeding).

Until recently I hadn’t used it for enquiries – most enquiries come to the enquiry desk anyway (we’re not actively roving yet) and if students catch you elsewhere in the building it’s usually not too far to the nearest OPAC. I’ve been following other libraries who have trialled mobile devices (such as Vicki Owen’s work at LJMU) and thought there was great potential, but never used it myself.

However, recently there have been two occasions when I have used my iPhone to deal with enquiries and it’s been really useful. The first time I was in the shelves helping with a backlog of shelving when a student asked for help locating an item. She was sure it should be available and had written down the classmark but couldn’t find it. I had a look with her but I couldn’t find it either. We were right by where the book should be and not very near to the OPACs, so I decided to double check the OPAC on my iPhone. It turned out the item wasn’t actually available (I think it may have been available at a different campus), and saved us time searching around as we now knew it wouldn’t be there. She thanked me for my help and said she’d reserve it instead. I guess we could even have reserved on my iPhone too, but she was happy to do that on her way out of the building. Happy student, and I was pleased to have been able to help her at her point (and location) of need.

The second occasion was when we were having problems with internet access, and I was weeding down in the basement – I often spend time in the shelves if the network is having problems. A student asked me for help locating books on a certain topic area and was stuck due to the internet problems. I had a vague idea where to look (secretly I quite like it when the OPAC is down as it tests your Dewey knowledge!), but wasn’t completely sure so decided to check using my mobile internet access on my iPhone. We found a specific classmark on the OPAC using my phone and the student was able to locate relevant materials. Another happy customer thanks to my iPhone.

Now OK, the second example was unusual circumstances and doesn’t happen that often thankfully, but the first example is something that happens all the time. We usually traipse over to the OPACs or the student has to come to the helpdesk (which must be frustrating for them as they’ve probably already checked, but we then double check as our OPAC isn’t very intuitive). Then, if it should (in theory) be available, we traipse back to the shelves (where the student has already been), and try to locate it. Sometimes at this point we find it, but sometimes the search continues to the recently returned items on trolleys, or sometimes even to the items still in the returns box by the self issue machines. If there’s only one available and the student can’t find it, I usually check our LMS to see when it was last returned which should give a clue to where it may be. Either way, it’s an unnecessarily long-winded procedure which could really be helped by mobile devices.

Some of our campuses are currently roving, but as far as I know they don’t have portable devices of any kind with them. Now that I’ve experienced it first hand, I can definitely see how it can help, even if it’s just iPod Touch or similar wireless enabled mobile devices used to access the OPAC and the web to assist with simple enquiries (although a tablet PC, or the rumoured Apple iSlate, with the admin side of the LMS as well as internet access would be even more useful).

I think maybe it’s finally time to put one of the suggestions sitting in my “possible future ideas” folder to management and see if it’s something we could potentially implement in the not too distant future.

I know there are a number of libraries who were interested in using mobile devices to assist with enquiries, is anyone using them currently? If so I’d love to hear your feedback in the comments, or if you know of anywhere that is currently using them.

I’ll definitely be watching with interest to see where this sort of thing progresses (the banks and airports are already actively using these sort of devices to aid customer service), and in the meantime you’ll be able to find me with my iPhone in my pocket in case students ask me for help when I’m out and about in the building.

Just a brief post to highlight a new(ish) feature on WordPress.com blogs which you can use to link your blog posts to your Twitter account.

I talked about the importance of linking your online accounts at my talks at the New Professional’s Conference and the CILIP Open Graduate Day earlier this year, and at the time recommended using Twitterfeed to help you link your blog posts into Twitter. This is still a great service and works well with all RSS feeds, but if you just want to link your WordPress.com blog(s) to your Twitter account(s), you can now do it directly from your WordPress dashboard.

I was going to run through the process of doing this, but I found a great page on the WordPress support pages which includes screenshots for each stage, so rather than re-invent the wheel, here’s the link.

I’ve tested it out on one of my work blogs with our Twitter account and it works really well – you can edit the Twitter post from within the dashboard on your new post (in the Publish box on the right sidebar) and it posts almost immediately to your Twitter account after publishing the blog post. You can also use it with blogs with multiple authors and have just their authored posts going to their individual Twitter account which could be great for shared blogs.

Thought it was worth a blog post anyway, as it’s a somewhat hidden feature (well, I didn’t know how advanced it was anyway so thought others might not either!). At the moment this feature is just on WordPress.com blogs, but the developers have said they are working on a plugin to achieve the same thing on WordPress.org (self-hosted) blogs too.