Resource Review 8: M-Libraries: Library Success- A Best Practices Wiki

The M-Libraries Best Practices Wiki is an extremely interesting and useful compilation of resources and links related to mobile libraries. It offers a list of libraries that have mobile interfaces or applications, and most items on the lists are links. The list is extensive, but not complete, because the University of Wisconsin's Ebling Library for the Health Sciences is not yet on the list. The wiki also offers many links, divided between sections Mobile Applications, SMS notification servers, Mobile Instruction, Mobile Tours of the Library, QR 2D codes, Other, Library Vendors Offering Mobile Interfaces or Applications, Vendors Offering Mobile Tours, Publishers Offering Databases for Mobile Devices, Publishers Offering Mobile Collections, and other sections regarding further reading and health effects of mobile devices.

I am very glad to have found this wiki at the end of this project for a variety of reasons. One is that it provides an entirely different perspective on the marriage of mobile devices and libraries, because it offers information on vendors and publishers. Many other articles and blogs on the subject discuss the growing need for libraries to have mobile content or for libraries to use mobile devices in some way, but none that I have come across so far have provided substantial links and sources to actually make it happen. The value of this wiki is so high because a librarian or team of people working on a mobile site for a library can actually navigate to it for ideas, examples, and links to vendors. It is the most practical source I have come across so far in my research on mobile devices and libraries.

This wiki also has an international scope, making it accessible to librarians around the world. For example, Scandinavia seems to be a leader in the movement towards the connection of mobile devices and libraries, and librarians here in the US and around the world can learn from them. Also, there is beauty in the fact that it is a wiki: editable and changeable by all. It certainly is something that all libraries considering the implementation of mobile technologies in their libraries should consult.