The fun and social iPhone app for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival got me thinking if a non-profit film festival can get create a useful and fun iPhone app, why can’t libraries?

Catalogue search

Librarians want patrons to be able to search their library’s catalogue. MJ Suhonos’ open source MyTPL does this really well. Users can search the catalogue, then using their location, can see the closest branch that has the item and use Google Maps to get there. TPL has 100 branches, so this is useful and uses smart phone technology in an elegant and appropriate way. Read Building a Location-aware Mobile Search Application with Z39.50 and HTML5 in the Code4Lib journal.

Social libraries

While searching the catalogue might be the top priority for many librarians, library users might want something that’s fun and social. I love how the Queer Film Festival combined basic information and fun social things like a compatibility test, a treasure hunt, and a pickup line generator.

While a pickup line generator would be inappropriate for libraries the other two ideas could be adapted. Social discovery layers allow users to rate, review, tag, and create their own lists of items in the catalogue. Allowing users to bump to discover new things they might enjoy, based on their respective lists would be a real life social version of Amazon’s “People who liked this also liked…”

A treasure hunt or geocashing type game could be used to encourage patrons to discover and explore  new branches of their library. Something like this could compliment a city-wide book club, like One Book One Vancouver. Participants could visit various locations where parts of the book take place to unlock badges/pins, or collect other digital swag. This could be adapted to a large academic library system for students by department, or to outreach to the larger community. For me this would be more fun than going a in-person tour.

Using iPhone functionality

I like the touch screen interface of the iPhone. I get a bit of enjoyment from the elegant experience of flicking through photos, swiping my finger to delete, pinching to zoom in our out, and shaking the phone to search. Libraries need to get this so we are not creating apps that require users to select things by ticking off tiny boxes, or alternatively where you need to shake your phone each and every time you want to search the catalogue.

At the Access 2009 hackfest, a group used iWebKit to create a cover flow display of new books. In an afternoon they created something that presented the University of Victoria’s new books in a really slick and gorgeous way.

Like Urban Spoon’s app, I can imagine an interface where you could lock various search facets (subject, format, audience, language, or any other information that’s in the MARC record) then shake your phone. I think this would be a good way to get somewhat customised recommendations and reviews.

I’m curious to see the types of library smart phone apps that are being developed. If you know of library apps that are fun, social, or elegant, please let me know.

It’s almost time for the Vancouver Queer Film Festival and I’m impressed with the iPhone app that Creative B’stro made for the festival. After being held up for approval by the App Store because of “adult content” it was released a few days later than planned.

I like it a lot. After seeing several conference apps that miss the mark, I’m really impressed by the content, the possibility of encouraging social interaction during the festival, and how it uses the iPhone interface.

Content

As expected, you can search films and parties and add them to your schedule. In addition to adding a film to your schedule, you can email a friend an invite, vote for the film, find out venue information and watch a trailer. FAQs are listed in the Info Booth and you can scroll through the entire festival guide.

There’s also a link to Out on Screen’s photo sets on Flickr, which would make for interesting browsing while waiting in line, for friends, or for a film to start.

Encourages social interactions

VQFF is one of my favourite social environments in Vancouver. I see old friends and meet a diverse group of new folks. There’s great films, interesting programming (like bathroom burlesque, living screen installation, various artists in residence), and great parties. This app encourages social interactions in several ways.

You can bump your phone to see how compatible you are with someone else. This compatibility rating is based on how similar your film and party schedules are.  At the bottom of the results, in small print, it says:

Please note: This compatibility test is only slightly more accurate than your average horoscope. We recommend using your own judgment when it comes to gauging true compatibility–unless, of course, you’re a Gemini. In that case, you need all the help you can get.

There’ s a treasure hunt with 10 pink Xs marked on a map. I uncovered one of the treasures and want to “dig” for the other 9. It’s a fun, slightly geeky adventure that you could do by yourself, or with other people. I can imagine asking friends (and strangers) what booty they’ve found.

There’s also links to the VQFF Facebook fan page, Twitter, and Youtube accounts where there’s current content.

Uses iPhone interface well

I’ve been disappointed with some other iPhone apps that don’t have a point, or  use iPhone functionality poorly. The VQFF app gets it right.

In addition to using bump to calculate your compatibility with someone else, you can shake your phone to generate a new pickup line. The pickup lines range from cute, funny, cheesy, and mildly offensive. I also like the Urban Spoon app, where you can shake your phone to spin slot machine type wheels to find a restaurant review. Shaking my phone is more fun than pressing a button on the screen.

This app uses location aware services appropriately and effectively. There are maps to venues (with an unfortunate typo ’3 kilometer’) and a treasure hunt.

You can flick through past festival posters like browsing album artwork with cover flow. I imagine that this is another thing to look at while killing time.

Well done VQFF and Creative B’stro on making a great iPhone app for the festival. This has got me thinking about ways that libraries could create useful, fun, and social apps for smart phones. More on that soon…

Tash, volunteer at Spartacus Books, representing anarchist infoshops

This year’s Vancouver Dyke March started almost on time, which had me scrambling to finish introducing the new lesbrarians. Public, academic, and special libraries were represented (library workers, technicians, librarians, managers, Qmunity library volunteers), along with archives, infoshops, nerdy academics/researchers, and library school students. Two French lesbrarians joined us, one who wants to spread the lesbrarian word to France, Belgium and Spain. Someone who I studied with timed her visit back from Austin, TX so she could march with us. We started the march with about 20 people, and finished with about 30.

Venn diagrams are awesome

Along the way we did some synchronized shushing at the intersections, which resulted in laugher and cheers from the crowds. Our community loves lesbrarians. Along the route we met a cute man in a Powell’s bookstore t-shirt who bubbled that he was a-gay-librarian-from-San-Francisco-omg-this-is-so-awesome. A self-identified “fag library technician” left us a little love on our Facebook wall.

The booklists were also a huge hit. Kelly McElroy, a newly minted librarian, created new booklists, including one for youth and families. Queer and queer-positive families loved them. Perhaps next year we’ll add a list of non-English books for families. All the booklists (PDF) were gone before we arrived at the park. (Note to self: next year print twice as many as I think we’ll need).

Happy Pride! Join us next year for Lesbrarians, no. 3, vol. 1?

Download this year’s booklist - from Kelly McElroy (PDF)

Download lesbrarian badges – from Terra Poirier (PDF)

Paper blogged by Sarah Leavitt

It’s less than a month until Pride weekend in Vancouver. This year’s Vancouver Dyke March is Saturday, July 31, 2010. Last year was the first time I organized the lesbrarian contingent for the Dyke March.

As it was the first time, I decided to keep things really low key. We met up on the day, put on official lesbrarian identification labels, did some group shushing action, and handed out lesbrarian approved booklists. We were a hit.

This year I want to do it again, but in a more collaborative and creative way. I think we can get more queer women (including bisexuals and trans women) who work in libraries, archives, and other information organizations to be delightfully dorky together. Last year some of our fans–writers, designers, and artists, joined our ranks.

Some suggestions for this year include:

• collecting queer books to give away, or we could check them out for a year, to be returned at the next Dyke March. We could also register the books on Book Crossing and track where they end up?
• updating the book list, and making a list of queer positive books for kids and parents, and teens
• something with a book truck
• book talks at the park (perhaps we could get on stage and do 60 second book reviews between performers?)
• reference desk at the post-march festival in the park

I fuss a bit about being so book focused, but oddly I don’t fuss about playing with and embodying librarian stereotypes. If you have any ideas for this year’s lesbrarians, let me know. This year we’ll aim for a lesbrarian planning potluck so we can hang out a bit more and be a bit more organized. Depending on the time, and people’s preferences, we might just meet at Rhizome Cafe. Let me know when you are free to meet.

Read more about last year’s lesbrarian shenanigans

Join the lesbrarian email list

Photo of Francisco-Fernando Granados by Erin Watkins

The best thing about my job is the people. This might be a strange answer coming from someone who works in the back in systems and technical services. My coworkers are smart, talented and hardworking. Our users are creative, quirky and compassionate. I work at a small art and design school–would you expect anything different?

I adore our students. I saw one of them at a party where he sat cross legged on the floor with bunches of bananas on his shoulders. He was in the library a few weeks ago wrapping the legs of the light tables with cassette tape for an installation. There’s another student who is often comes to work in the library, who works at my favourite neighbourhood stationery and typewriter fetish store. There’s a first year student who was in one of my tour groups on my second day of work. I regularly see him on the bike path, and he hollers “hello librarian!” when we pass.

There’s a prof from somewhere else who’s on sabbatical. He’s religiously in the library working hard on his next book, sitting in a study carrel by the window, typing away for at least 5 hours a day. There’s an artist from around the corner, who comes in every Saturday morning to read the paper, and browse the new issues of magazines. There’s a ceramics technician who comes into browse the magazines with his big ceramic cup of coffee.

We’ve just added a regular feature to our news blog: Pssst…, which are user profiles and recommendations. We have a fantastic library school practicum student, Erin Watkins, who has made this happen.

I want to highlight the people in our community and our collections and services. We’ll seek out people who use the more unique collections–menus collection, artists’ books, sound effects, etc. I imagine that some people might answer that their favourite library resource is the space, a specific database, the gorgeous magazines, meeting rooms, and the staff.

We know that people will start looking for information by asking their friends. The “People who liked this also liked” recommendations are a human discovery layer and also drive sales. In addition to putting a more human face on the library website, I hope that this will be a way for our users to discover new resources. Perhaps people will request to be profiled, but I suspect that we’ll have to ask people if we can interview them.

I’m excited to highlight our collections and users. I’m also excited to have conversations with our users about what they use and what they love.

Read the first Pssst! feature