Mobile ALA: Search for Sessions and Exhibitors

Seems that this is the year of the mobile American Library Association (ALA) conference. As we reported June 15 (p. 21), attendees at this year's ALA in Chicago can submit text message questions about registration, conference venues, and even which Windy City sites to see, which will be answered by 250 volunteer ALA Ambassadors using Mosio's Text a Librarian service.

Now, ALA has announced yet another mobile partnership, this time with Boopsie, to build a mobile interface giving librarians access to information on sessions (“where should you be”) and exhibitors (“who should you see”) without having to navigate the unwieldy conference program or check the static PDF version online. With this service, users can type just a few characters from any word in a session title, description, or exhibitor name and narrow down the matching entries.

Sound familiar? That's because the Boopsie ALA site uses the same “prefix incremental search” featured in this space previously (see InfoTech, LJ 5/1/09, p. 21) as part of the WorldCat Mobile pilot service. So if you're feeling bold and connected, go ahead: leave that conference program in your hotel room and join the mobile masses at ALA. Finally, whether you're in Chicago or not, don't miss all the live conference news and session reports on LJ's mobile site mobile.libraryjournal.com.