A Library in Your Palm

The Palm Tungsten…an HP iPaq…the Sony CLIE. These names may not be familiar, but you've definitely seen these small electronic devices in your library. PDAs (personal digital assistants) are powerful computers that are small enough to fit in your hand and light enough to carry around in your pocket. Increasingly, your staff and patrons rely on these electronic tools as personal organizational and time management systems. (For more about PDAs and how they work, see "PDAs 101," p. 11.)

But PDAs have applications far beyond serving as an electronic organizer. Academic, public, and special libraries are all developing creative uses for this technology. Librarians are determining how better to serve patrons who want library information on a PDA. They are also taking advantage of handheld computing to improve work processes and services.

This technology is embraced in libraries in many ways. PDA-friendly web pages offer e-books and electronic reference materials for PDAs. Programming offers training on using PDAs. Connectivity stations are popping up. And libraries are pushing database providers and traditional library systems vendors to create PDA interfaces.

Librarians have always been early adopters of new technology, at the forefront of effective utilization. Patrons, whether in public, academic, or special libraries, rely on librarians to envision uses of new technological developments. Librarians are evaluators and instructors, and PDA technology is a logical and necessary extension of this role we've always played.

By far the widest adoption of PDAs has been in libraries that serve health and medical communities. PDAs have been heavily implemented by healthcare professionals because of the need for point-of-care information access, such as patient tracking information, drug and disease data, and evidence-based medicine. The PDA has been called the new black bag, a library at the bedside, the next stethoscope. To meet the needs of their patrons, health and medical librarians have led the integration of PDAs into libraries. Now all kinds of libraries use PDAs, not only in the professional marketplace, such as law and business libraries, but also in public and general academic libraries. Here are the major ways that libraries are implementing handheld computing. For a complete listing of handheld projects in libraries, visit my web page "PDAs and Handhelds in Libraries and Academia."

Librarians are adapting their regular information pages to be PDA-friendly. Using simplified HTML, XHTML, or content dished out of a database, libraries format regular web pages to display clearly on PDA and mobile device screens. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed XHTML Basic to display content on devices such as PDAs, although a general rule of thumb is that any ADA-compliant web page will also be accessible on a PDA. For more design hints, see the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library's XHTML Basic and PDA Web Pages. Instead of developing PDA-friendly content in-house, many libraries hire companies such as AvantGo, Lectora Pocket Publisher, and Mobipocket to convert web content to mobile device formats.

Content that changes often or is referenced frequently is what people want to carry on a PDA. The Lincoln Trail Library System, Champaign, IL, provides library hours, contact information, upcoming events, and directions for over 140 of its member and affiliate branches in a format that patrons can download and store using AvantGo. The Cunningham Library, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, provides a materials locator—a PDA guide to help patrons find items. The University of Georgia (UGA) Libraries, Athens, has a PDA page that provides directions, operating hours, and a browsable guide to Library of Congress (LC) call numbers with floor locations. An Ask a Question e-mail reference form for the PDA gets sent to a librarian when the PDA is hot-synced. This page is currently receiving 46 hits a day, according to Diane Trap, reference librarian, UGA Main Library.

Many traditional library guides have been converted to PDA formats. The Golden Gate University Library, San Francisco, includes two library publications, APA Style Guide and How To Choose a Research Topic. The Western Kentucky Library, Bowling Green, has created an entire PDA Library Portal, which includes research guides that provide over 40 subject-specific overviews formatted for PDAs, including LC subject headings and call number ranges, indexing and full-text article services, books, and recommended web sites.

For locating additional content specifically designed for or accessible on a PDA, librarians are turning to new portals offered by the traditional search engines. Google and Alltheweb both provide special search engines for locating PDA-friendly pages. All the Mobile Web locates pages written in wireless markup language (WML); Google's wireless access protocol (WAP) service will even translate pages on the fly into a PDA-readable format.

Increasing numbers of health textbooks, reference books, and other content are being created in a format designed for reading on a PDA. Familiar titles now accessible include Physician's Desk Reference and the "5-Minute Clinical Consult" series. Some come as an electronic file, while others are available as add-on physical expansion cards. At OSF Saint Francis Medical Center Library & Resource Center, Peoria, IL, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine Companion Volume is available as a separate module for a one-week checkout. Nonmedical titles abound as well. Eighteen-hundred publicly available e-books can be downloaded from the University of Virginia Library's Etext Center. MemoWare, a division of Handmark, is a unique collection of thousands of documents (databases, literature, maps, technical references, lists, etc.) specially formatted for handheld devices.

The University of Alberta Libraries' The PDA Zone intermingles free and licensed content. Similarly, the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences Library, Little Rock, maintains a list of PDA applications, such as Clinical Pharmacology Onhand, which can be bought by users at discounted prices because the library owns a print copy or has a campus license.

In cases where the traditional information producers have not yet adopted PDA formats, librarians are stepping in and digitizing key content. Grace Lee, electronic services librarian at New York Law School, along with two faculty members, created the JurisPDA portal for essential legal materials.

Commercial databases are becoming PDA-friendly, too. Gale Directory of Databases now includes a category for handheld products. The medical, health, and legal database vendors have been the first to develop simplified interfaces for accessing their traditional databases. OVID@Hand allows users to download tables of contents for journals selected by individual users, view abstracts, mark articles to retrieve in full text at the next sync, and even build search requests. OVID@Hand has recently added full-text books such as Lippincott's Nursing Drug Guide, MedWeaver Disease Profiles, A to Z Drug Facts, and Drug Interaction Facts. Other standard medical databases are also available for PDAs. Similarly, Westlaw Wireless provides a PDA interface that allows searching of its full database, including cases, statutes, regulations, news, topical materials, legal citations, and Westlaw's legal directory.

Many journals or current news web sites have implemented PDA versions; Wiley Interscience MobileEdition uses the AvantGo site to provide access to tables of contents from 15 of its core journals. Third-party vendors are aggregating information from many sources, such as JournalToGo, which brings together content from key health and medical sources and provides clinical abstracts and healthcare news customized according to a user's setup.

Librarians at Cornell University's Mann Library are investigating traditional library databases and PDA accessibility. In the first phase of its PDA project, the Mobile Mann Computing Group at Cornell created a process for converting files from EndNote, a popular bibliographic citation manager, to Jfile, a simple Palm OS database program. Michael Cook and Jim Morris-Knower are now testing how traditional library databases accessed through aggregators such as ProQuest or SilverPlatter function on wireless devices and PDAs. The testing is on Palm OS PDAs, using three different browsers: AvantGo, Blazer, and EudoraWeb. They are comparing accessibility, images, navigation, and performance of forms for each site. The project will be completed at the end of the spring 2003 semester.

Lending materialsLibrarians are also locating sources of popular PDA content, evaluating their quality, and mediating purchases and access. The initial model for distributing this sort of content was for individual consumers, with payment by a credit card, downloaded from a web site. Patrons are purchasing PDA versions of titles, from the latest Michael Crichton novel to The Hours by Michael Cunningham, at Amazon.com, which includes "Handheld Compatible" in its product descriptions. Increasingly, vendors are providing site or enterprise licenses, and jobbers such as YBP/Baker & Taylor are now stocking popular titles. This allows librarians to make institutional purchases through traditional purchase orders.

Palm is trying to make collecting PDA e-books easier for libraries. It now offers digital rights management software for libraries that facilitates the checking out of e-books to PDA devices. The Cleveland Public Library is checking out e-books using technology from Overdrive. According to the model, one patron can access an e-book at a time. The e-book will be inaccessible, or locked, when the borrowing period ends.

It is always a challenge to keep users informed about our resources. Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, is making it easier for patrons to access librarian-selected and -reviewed PDA resources by including them in the online catalog. PDA resources such as the Wiley Interscience MobileEdition titles are cataloged and designated as PDA resources by notes in MARC record field 300 (physical format), 506 (restrictions on use), and 538 (platform requirements). Marketing PDA resources also includes the usual publicity venues of web sites, newsletters, and e-mail announcements. Some librarians have drummed up business by leading a user group or with public press releases and local and national news coverage.

Librarians are offering one-on-one instruction or training sessions on effective use of PDAs. The Health Sciences Library at the University at Buffalo, NY, provides regular classes in "Getting To Know Your PDA" and "Drug Applications for the PDA." New York Law School Library teaches "PDAs in Law School," which uses a document camera to show how programs really function on the PDA. The University of Connecticut Health Library uses the Margi Presenter To Go, which employs an expansion slot on a PDA to plug in a VGA cable and connect a PDA directly to an LCD projector. This displays the small face of the PDA on a regular full-size projector screen. It even comes with a credit card–sized remote control for the PDA to advance PowerPoint slides.

Libraries are also lending devices and accessories. These may be for in-house training or for week-long checkouts. Some devices come loaded with reference and journal content in specific subject areas the library has purchased. Peripherals being loaned include expansion cards (with additional memory or specific reference materials), keyboards, digital cameras, voice recorders, and Margi Presenter To Go systems.

One of the most valuable services librarians are providing is showing users how to get content onto their PDAs and how to get it off. Libraries supply syncing stations, either through physical cradles at computer workstations (such as at the University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System, which has docking stations for seven different types of PDAs), or through stations that allow PDAs to use a wireless or infrared connection to a network.

The Simmons College Libraries, Boston, recently installed a single Clarinet Systems EthIR LAN station in the reference section, which allows patrons to use an infrared port to go live on the Internet or print directly from their PDA. It even allows staff to sync to their personal desktop over the network instead of having to put their PDA in the cradle at their desk.

Library staff are discovering ways to use PDAs to make their work easier. The most common staff adoption is use of the barcode attachments in order to simplify the repetitive task of gathering statistics, such as physical head counts, reference inquiries, and stack inventory. Amelia Hinchliffe and Steve Wieda at the University of Connecticut Libraries, Storr, converted their labor-intensive paper system of monitoring and collecting data on 20 copiers, 60 computers, and eight printing stations to automated forms that sit on Handspring Visors equipped with a Momentum II barcode scanner. Data entry and unnecessary reentry has been greatly reduced, and accuracy has greatly improved. The Cunningham Library, Indiana State University, is beta-testing a program with a mobile barcode reader and software that downloads item records by call number range and circulation status into a PDA. The device can be taken to the stacks for shelf reading and inventory maintenance. Cunningham Library is also testing chat live reference functions on a PDA.

As patrons become PDA users, the integrated library system (ILS) vendors have realized the need to provide an interface for wireless or small screen devices. Innovative Interfaces (III), Dynix, and Endeavor are all developing products. The Minneapolis Public Library, among others, is beta-testing III's AirPAC, allowing users with small, handheld, Internet-enabled devices to access their online catalog. The AirPac was announced at the American Library Association conference back in June 2001, so it's great to see it in a live implementation. III also is developing circulation modules where due dates could be beamed from a circulation station to a patron's PDA calendar.

The King County Library System (KCLS), serving suburban Seattle, is also beta-testing wireless access to its catalog through handheld devices. The KCLS contracted with a third-party consultant to build the interface to its iPac/Information Portal from Dynix. This project will include checking-out devices, like the Zaurus made by Sharp, for tetherless searching.

PDAs require resources, both monetary and human, and librarians are of necessity cautious about committing to a serious launch of PDAs. Security issues—for individual devices and securing communication while beaming or using the network—are also serious concerns. There are very strict FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) regulations within academia and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) protocols within the health and medical field that regulate the privacy and electronic transfer of personal information. There are also concerns about copyright, and storage of e-files on a PDA—circulation management software might block access after a checkout period but not delete the actual file from the PDA—and it is next to impossible to police acceptable-use of copyrighted materials on such distributed devices. Additionally, librarians need to convince more vendors to make compliant products.

While it is easy to create a web page of PDA resources, there are policies and procedures that must be determined before initiating a comprehensive PDA program.

Handheld computing, in some format, is here to stay. Most predictions are for convergence and compatibility. Convergence is necessary because users don't want to carry a pager, cell phone, PDA, and other gadgets. Increasingly these devices are collapsing into the same device—or at least fewer devices, such as the XDA, eXtended Digital Assistant PocketPC PDA/mobile phone hybrid. Users are also demanding increased compatibility and expecting separate systems to talk to each other seamlessly.

In libraries we can expect to see more adoption of what is currently used in health and medical libraries: resource pages, collection of content, training, and support. We can also expect additional e-books, e-journals, and small-screen database interfaces, as well as patrons who expect librarians to teach them to navigate it all. We can push vendors for wider applications of PDAs for administrative library tasks, increased interactivity between librarians and patrons, and creative integration of technologies such as speech recognition, multimedia, or even global positioning systems. This is no longer bleeding-edge technology but something more common and more expected. Now is the time to get on board.