FEATURE
Mobile Information Graham McCann, head of product management and innovation and
Mobile devices are an exciting opportunity for IOP Publishing (IOP) to provide our readers with flexible access to our content in the way that best suits them. We have at our fingertips an abundance of new ways to deliver content and mobile platforms are part of that mix. Our apps are free to download, as part of our commitment to readers to provide access to content.
IOPscience express is an
iPhone application that has been designed to keep users up to date with the latest articles to appear in IOP-hosted journals. The app allows users to view and download articles that have been published in over 40 IOP-hosted journals
over the last two years. Users can also search for relevant articles, and e-mail information about selected articles to themselves or a colleague to enable access at a later date. The
Physicsworld.com newsflash app allows users to download the latest news articles from physicsworld. com directly to their iPhone or iPod Touch. Users can quickly access headline news stories, which are displayed in an easy-to-read format. This is in addition to the physicsworld. com content, which can also be accessed and viewed on mobile devices in the usual way.
There is also the Physics World app that has been developed more recently, and is
Simon Day, product manager, OCLC
OCLC currently offers mobile access to library catalogue data via the WorldCat database and our library resources discovery solution WorldCat Local. Over the next year we plan to expand mobile access to include licensed electronic content from multiple providers that is included in our WorldCat Local central index. OCLC offers a mobile- optimised website that can be used on a wide range of mobile devices rather than device- specific apps. Both mobile and desktop solutions
are included in the subscription price for WorldCat Local. Licensed content requiring authentication is not yet included in our mobile solution. We shall be adding that over the coming year. Currently, searching of licensed databases/e-content is included only in our desktop offering. Also, social features such as creation and sharing of item lists are not yet included in our mobile offering. OCLC’s aim is to provide access to
library resources at the user’s point of need, regardless of device or location. Industry and commercial user research shows more and more activity is moving to smaller screens. Providing researchers with the ability to access data quickly and, more importantly, giving researchers the tools to re-access that data later from a primary or desktop environment, is key to success.
16 Research Information AUG/SEP 2011
The ability to access data quickly at the spur of the moment and then take action on that data later will drive much of the mobile website development in the future
The WorldCat Local Mobile website has
been built on JQueryMobile, which provides graceful degradation for low-capability feature phones and high-end touch functionality for smartphones. The latest edition of JQueryMobile provides better support for Blackberry OS5, which will open the door to library resources to even more users worldwide. Without a platform such as JQueryMobile, organisations must make a choice regarding which users they will serve or spend significant resources building for and testing on multiple device platforms. Building a web application on a generalised platform provides flexibility and saves development resources for features that enhance the user experience rather than workarounds for specific devices. Some compromises must be made when choosing a web application as opposed to device-specific development, but those compromises are diminishing as HTML5 gains support among
device manufacturers and web browsers. With HTML5, organisations can provide one website that enhances appropriately based on the device used to access it. Mobile devices are already used extensively
in research for data gathering as well as access. Commercial and industry research shows the difficulty users have in manipulating data within a mobile context; however, larger devices that are still “mobile” are easing this difficulty, which will certainly lead to more research occurring on mobiles. Tablets can provide a better interface to visualisations and cloud storage allowing users to take action when the moment is ripe and then make better use of their data, notes, etc. later when they are on a more powerful machine. Research does not occur in one place or on one device. The ability to access data quickly at the spur of the moment and then take action on that data later will drive much of the mobile website development in the future.
www.researchinformation.info
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