Texting in the Library Stacks

I heard about this neat idea during a discussion group at ALA Midwinter this week. tripod, a shared library catalog for Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, offers a text message link on its library holdings pages. After a user looks up an item they can click the “Send via Text Message” button and the location, call number and title of the item will be sent to the users cell phone as a text message. A user doesn’t have to worry about those scraps of paper as they make their way through the stacks and if they get sidetracked and have to revisit the library later they still have the information needed to locate the item, right there in their cell phone. Take a look at this search results screen to see for yourself. Another idea from our Technology Innovation Librarian, Michael Sauers, is to install Google Send to Phone extension on your library’s Firefox browsers. This allows users to copy and paste web content from the browser window into a pop-up box and then send it as a text message to their cell phone. Users could choose to send call numbers, citations, directions or anything else they need to keep handy directly to their cell phones. Has anyone used either of these tools before? Let us know if you try them out and what you think. It’s an easy way to keep information on hand without the need for a printer or pen and paper.