Monday, August 4, 2008

THING 7 Communication Tools

Today a lady called from California
with a reference question: Could we
help her find old images of a school
and church her mother attended 40
years ago? The lady is creating a
"memory quilt".

We will find, scan and e-mail
the images to this Californian who
will, in turn, print them out on cloth
squares for her memory quilt.
How's that for a "mash up"?

After reading the 2005 Smart Library
article about SMS or "text messaging",
it is interesting to note how pervasive
text messaging now is.

The article mentioned that III offers
library software called AirPac,
adapted for small portable and
wireless devices.

I "googled" AirPac and found this
link to the Minneapolis' wireless library catalog:
http://mplwebcat.mplib.org/airpac/jsp/airpacIndex.jsp

It has a very basic and simple interface.
That is very cool. Access the library
from wherever you are, without a computer.
I played a little with the catalog and it looks
like it allows access to electronic library books
and information right from one's wireless device.