Nowadays, audio guides are a common companion for visitors of museums, exhibitions and even on city tours worldwide. Newer technologies and devices, like Apple‘s iPod Touch, call for further developments. So, multimedia guides start to capture the field and to substitute classical audio guides. Although an audio guide might still be the first choice of curators of any museum to avoid distractions of a visitor from the actual exhibits, when it comes to other applications, multimedia guides can be more than helpful. At our university, students have developed such a multimedia guide, called iCampus Wildau. With the help of maps, audio tracks, and 360°-pictures a user is guided through the library and can get current information via WLAN about visible and invisible services and options.
A web portal allows the library staff to add any content useful for a visitor. So, there is the possibility to use the guide to deliver permanent information about the facilities of the library as well as non-permanent information about special events or exhibitions within the library. The content is provided in three languages so far: English, Spanish, and German. Other languages can be added conveniently. Currently, an RFID-installation is evaluated which is planned to be used to add location based services to the guide.
We will explain the features of the multimedia guide and show how it can easily be adapted to any library. Discussing the results of an evaluation by library users and staff will help to see the advantages of using this kind of device beyond using it in museums, for city tours or exhibitions.
Janett Mohnke (*1967) studied computer science at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. She received her diploma in 1991 and made her PhD in 1999. For several years, she has lived in and worked at different, interesting places like Saarbruecken in Germany, Princeton and Stanford in the U.S.A., and finally Berlin in Germany again. Since 2008 she has been professor of technical computer science at Technical University of Applied Sciences in Wildau (which is close to Berlin in Germany) teaching students who want to become experts in building telematics systems. Her research interests are focused on several aspects in the field of embedded systems, parallel computing, and mobile information systems.
Since 2006 Frank Seeliger has been the head of the academic library at the University of Applied Sciences Wildau, a town in the Federal State Brandenburg, located in the outskirts of Berlin. He‘s dealing, among other things, with all topics of interests regarding RFID-developments at this institution. This involves his membership in the AutoID/RFID task force at his University, together with members of staff from areas such as logistics and telematics. Since 2008 he has been organising the annual two-day RFID-Symposium for German-speaking and English-understanding (or native and non-native English speaking) librarians. Furthermore, he‘s a member of a librarian-specific standing working committee in Germany (adopter group “RFID in libraries”. On top of this, he‘svery interested in following and adopting in his own library context a lot of open source solutions and testing new developments to manage LMS/ILS, self-check-systems, intranets, to present visuals and so on.
Last but not least, he‘s currently the Chairman of the Regional Association of the Federal State Brandenburg in the German Library Association (Deutscher Bibliotheksverband e.V.) and participated for the first time in a World Library and Information Congress last year in Gothenburg..
#p422 #iatul2012 shows examples of appealing mobile apps
— Yboon (@Yboon1) June 7, 2012
#p422 #iatul2012interesting mobile guide for campus twitter.com/Yboon1/status/…
— Yboon (@Yboon1) June 7, 2012