Information Takes Over

Imagine logging on to your library’s website, requesting a book, and waiting for an email to tell you that the book is now waiting for you to collect at your local library.  Not too hard to imagine huh?  But what if you couldn’t get to the library for some reason?  Maybe you work night shifts, or the library is too far away, or you don’t have transport, or you have a medical condition that prevents you getting out easily.

So the book should come to you. Right?

How radically different should a mobile solution be?  What could it be?  What are the difficulties? Why would you want to be able to have some sort of book related service that was not tethered to a physical library location?

How about imagining that a man comes to your door, via car or scooter, and delivers a bundle of books that you chose earlier on the library’s website. Maybe that man is a volunteer with a local charity? Maybe you haven’t left your house in years, not least because there is no one to take you to the library?  Imagine that in the five minutes the man was at your doorstop, he was able to suggest that you might like Author B because you had already read several of Author A, and could also check to see if there was a copy of that book your saw on telly last night, “withering something or other”? Maybe the man at the door is also your social worker and provides books as an extra little service?

Imagine that you could set preferences for your book selection and that 3 of your 6 should be chosen by serendipity?

Imagine that you were only staying at a hotel for a couple of nights, but the hotel could get you some books to read from the local library so that they were ready for your arrival? Maybe you travelled by plane and didn’t want to carry in your baggage that 800 page hardback epic that you were in the middle of?

Imagine that for a small subscription you could have a selection of DVDs delivered to your door along with related reading material?

Imagine that a youngster on a moped with a box deliveres your reserved book to you as soon as it becomes available in the library?

What would a library service that was mobile mean to you?

This is something I have been thinking on for a while now, and I am convinced that libraries could be a whole lot better at reaching out to the ‘unlibraried’ if they were more mobile, and if the system for managing the mobile stock was a combination of user driven on-line processes and basic functionality hosted on a hand-held device.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 18:59 and is filed under Library. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.