Reference Question of the Week – 5/17/15

I thought this was actually an interesting question, but the real punch line comes at the end.

Yesterday at the library, one of our volunteers came out and asked me if she could ask me an iPhone question.

Me: Of course. [despite knowing very little about iPhones*]

Her: Okay, good. Sometimes when I get a call, I get the Accept and Decline buttons - but sometimes, I don't. Why does that happen?

Me: Huh, I've never heard of that before - let me see what I can find and I'll let you know [because the volunteer was going to be at the library for a few hours, I knew I could get back to her on it]

Her: That's fine. I tried it with someone else in the back - she called the first time and the buttons weren't there, and when she called a second time they were.

A search for "iphone not showing accept decline buttons" was all it took - I checked two of the results, and they had the same answer: if the phone is unlocked, you get the buttons; if the phone is locked, you get a "slide to answer" option.

She didn't mention getting a slider, or having her phone locked or unlocked, so I wasn't sure if this information would actually help. She happened to be sitting with the person who had done the test calls when I went back and told her what I found. Happily, she said she did get the slider the first time, which she slid, typed her code, and answered. Then the second test call, with her phone now unlocked, showed her the two buttons.

Since everything they saw seemed to line up with what I found, we decided this must be the case. Which was an interesting discovery, and she was going to watch and see if it kept happening this way in relation to being locked or unlocked.

Before I left, they thanked me, and she said,

Thanks Brian. I could have asked my kids, but they always show you so fast, and just do it once and never explain anything and get mad if you don't get it right away.

So there's another good reason for the future job security of librarians - someone more patient at explaining things than a 14 year old kid.

*I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Reference Librarian's motto is, "you don't have to know everything, you just have to know how to find out everything."

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Detecting and Redirecting Mobile Devices

Remember a few months ago, when I was inspired by Steve Butzel's presentation at NELA2010 and created a mobile version of my library's website? I bet you have that date marked on your calendar.

Anyway, one lingering problem I had was some mechanism to automatically detect mobile devices when they visited our website, and reroute them to the mobile version instead of the full web version. I finally had some time this week and was able to accomplish that - aided by the fact that it was easier than I expected.

The ultimate goal is to redesign our entire site along the lines Brett suggested, by creating a stylesheet specifically for mobile devices. Brad pointed out that the Canton Public Library employs this, awesomely: visit their site and slowly make your browser window smaller, and watch the website flip from "full web" mode to "mobile" mode.

That was more than I could handle this week, so I opted for the detect-and-redirect approach. I had found online instructions using both javascript and php, and I went with the php method because

• I think php is more reliable than javascript, because javascript depends on the browser whereas php runs on our server
• Php is more fun, and I know our server runs php

The website offering the php method is http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi, and very happily they make it available free for non-profits. Here's what I did:

1. Read and reread their website
2. Downloaded the main bit of code, and uploaded it to our web server
3. Used their Function Generator to create the snippet of code to paste into the top of our homepage. I chose to treat all of their options as a mobile browser, and redirect them to http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/mobile - the resulting code looked like this:

   require_once('mobile_device_detect.php');
   mobile_device_detect(true,true,true,true,true,true,true,
   'http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/mobile',false);
   

   (this should be two lines of code, but it wraps because of the width of my blog - if you use this code, make sure the second and third lines above are actually one long line)

4. I copy/pasted that code into our index.html homepage. However, because this is php code, it had to go between php tags, (<?php and ?>), so the complete code I actually added to the top of our page was:

   <?php 
   require_once('mobile_device_detect.php');
   mobile_device_detect(true,true,true,true,true,true,true,
   'http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org/mobile',false);
   ?>
   

   (again, see note above about line wrapping)

5. Note that the path in the "require_once" line must match where on your web server you actually saved the mobile_device_detect.php file (downloaded in Step 2)
6. Now, the last step was a little tricky, because it involves editing the .htaccess on the server. It's easy though, and one of their faq answers explains it.

   Basically, .html files don't normally run php code - .php files do that. So if our homepage was index.php instead of index.html, I could have skipped this step. Instead, in order to make .html pages execute php, I had to add a few lines to our server's .htaccess file - which was no trouble at all - and then everything worked splendidly

That is, at least, so far. I've done some testing with mobile devices and (as suggested) with the User Agent Switcher Firefox add-on, and all of that has worked. But please, if you have a mobile device, visit our homepage (http://www.chelmsfordlibrary.org) and let me know if you don't get redirected to our mobile site.

A couple other notes:

• I also added a link to the mobile site in the upper-left corner of the homepage, in case the redirect doesn't work
• I only added this auto-detect to the homepage. I thought about adding it to every page, but our full site has a lot of information our mobile site doesn't - especially descriptions of our events. If I added the redirect to every single page, people with mobile devices basically wouldn't have access to any of that. So, my thinking is to provide mobile users with the (robust) basics, but if they want more than that they'll have to endure our not-great coding until we're able to redesign the entire site to be mobile-friendly

This was easier than I was expecting, which makes me think I missed something.

Update: someone pointed out a gap in my logic. On the mobile site, there is a link to "Visit our main site" which linked back to our full homepage. However, since the homepage redirected people to the mobile site, anyone clicking that link from the mobile site just got looped right back to the mobile site. So, I changed that link to go to our About page. Again, this is a good reason to just have mobile-friendly stylesheets like Brett and Brad suggest above.

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Creating a Mobile Library Website

You're probably sick of hearing about things I picked up at NELA2010, but I'm not done yet.

In the very last session of the conference, Steve Butzel from the Portsmouth (NH) Public Library demonstrated the Online Newsstand he created to boost their online magazine usage. That was neat in itself, but what I really took away from his talk was that I needed to - and easily could - create a version of our website specifically designed for mobile phones.

He showed theirs (in beta), which is simple and awesome. It inspired me to give it a try.

I started on http://chelmsfordlibrary.org/mobile/ yesterday, and am still working on it yet (in fact, I haven't even told anyone at my library yet that I'm doing it - surprise!).

I don't have a cell phone and so haven't tested this on a smartphone yet. I have been using testiphone.com (an online tool Steve highlighted - there are other tools, too), so please give it a try and let me know how it works.

Steve's point was that it could be very simple - hours, directions, events, a contact link, and a purchase suggestion link for patrons who are in a bookstore (great for people with apps like RedLaser). Here's the logic of what to include:

• Hours
• Directions (right now it just links to Google Maps, but I need to also include a link for our branch library)
• Ask a Librarian (haven't created this yet, but it will be a simple email form)
• Purchase Suggestion (also not done, but will be a simple form)
• Upcoming Events (our calendar was not at all mobile-friendly, so I just grabbed the rss feed and ran it through feed2js.org to create just a list of our upcoming events. There could be separate feeds for adult events, childrens events, etc., but that might be overkill)
• Link to the catalog (I also embedded a catalog search, but that might be too much. And I found the catalog isn't entirely mobile-friendly either - we'll be moving to the Evergreen ILS soon, so I'll wait and see on this, otherwise I'd investigate LibAnywhere from LibraryThing, which Steve also mentioned)
• Link back to the main library website for everything else

The next trick will be getting our regular homepage to automatically detect mobile devices and reroute them to the mobile website. I haven't even attempted this yet, but have done a little research.

Apparently, cell phones and smartphones aren't just a fad after all, so having a website that works well on these devices is just as important as a browser-based website - and this will only become more important as a way to serve our patrons on their terms. I was happy with how easy it was. Now I need to find out what my coworkers think.

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Mobile App for Searching Libraries

Not having a cell phone, I can be a bit behind when it comes mobile apps - but this is still cool even to tech-no's like me.

My former co-worker Chris pointed out the iPhone app RedLaser, that turns the iPhone's camera into a barcode scanner. The app was designed to do instant price checks while you're in a store, to see if you could buy something cheaper online.

He also found that the database it scans can be customized - which means it could be modded to search a library catalog (among other things).

So a patron with an iPhone (or an Android) could be shopping in a bookstore, see a book they'd like to read, and instantly scan it to see if it's available at their local library. Great stuff.

But wait, there's more...
Another colleague, Scott Kehoe of NMRLS, posted about making customized versions that can search the MVLC (my library consortium), MassCat and the NOBLE consortium catalog. His post shows how he did it, links to Delicious for the customized databases, and explains how you can customize it yourself.

I think this is a great thing to promote to patrons, but they need to be careful about walking around bookstores scanning barcodes. I've heard many stores will throw people out if they appear to be doing "research" (recording a store's prices or looking for country of origin). Also, about this app, one bookstore owner was quoted as saying:

If I see any lecherous internet bottomfeeders using my store as a display case for a discount website, I will politely ask them to leave.

As the world of mobile devices becomes more compatible with the world of ebooks, the next step will be to create customs searches of places like Overdrive and Project Gutenberg, so that patrons can not just locate but also download the desired book immediately. I tend to think instant gratification is not a good thing, but in this day and age, it is certainly easy to support.

For a few more library-related apps, check out Aaron's post on Walking Paper.

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Reference Question of the Week – 9/21/08

I really don't like stereotyping patrons, or thinking that patrons who look a certain way will use only a certain type of information and stay away from others. But in this case, a patron breaking out of a stereotype made his reference question even funnier.

A guy in his late forties walked up to the desk. He was scruffy, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans with paint and putty smears, and looked very uncomfortable in the library. He more or less looked like a stereotypical construction worker, and lately when a skilled tradesmen comes in, he is coming to ask for help with writing a resume or with searching the internet for job ads.

So this is what I was expecting, but this guy showed me how wrong I am to stereotype:

Patron: I just bought an iPhone, and the guy at the Apple Store said that I should come here to get the manual.
Me: Oh... Well, we have books about the iPhone, but not the actual manual. Maybe we can download it from their website - so you didn't get any manual in the box?
Patron: Yeah, it came with one, but the Apple guy told me that the best one that could be included is always missing, and I should get it at the library.

Ah. When he said "missing," it dawned on me what the guy at the Apple Store told him about: iPhone: The Missing Manual.

I took the patron over to the 004's and showed him the book. He looked at it skeptically, and said "this is a book; I want the manual the Apple Guy was talking about."

I tried to reassure him that I was 99% positive this is what the salesman sent him to the library for; we don't have product manuals, this one is called "the missing manual," and I even pointed to the "The book that should have been in the box" slogan on the cover. The patron flipped through the pages, and eventually said, "well, even if this is the wrong thing, it looks like it'll show me how to use it."

After he seemed comfortable, we started walking back out towards the Reference Desk. Just then another patron, dressed exactly in exactly the same stereotypical way as the first, walked up to him. As they walked away from me up the stairs, I could overhear their conversation:

Patron 2: Did you find that book? It ain't going to help - you can barely dial a phone, let alone use a computer.
Patron 1: Shut up - with this thing, I won't need a computer. It does it all for me.

Perhaps in addition to our basic computer classes, we need to start a series on iPhones, iPods, and other new devices. Then again, teaching a beginner how to sign up for an email account is one thing; teaching a beginner how to use an iPhone might be more than one hour-long session.

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