Irma Pasanen, Ari Muhonen: Library in Your Pocket 23rd Annual IATUL Conference, June 2 – 6, 2002 Kansas City, Missouri, USA
SMS Short Message Service –max. 160 characters way of communicating in Finland, especially for the young generation sending SMS’s is cheap, sender pays for the message close to 1 bill. SMS’s was sent in 2000
Why mobile phone services researches have computers, students have mobile phones undergraduate and post grad students in HUT, all skilled in IT students are keen library users new library system (Voyager) made SMS use possible technically
Project fast delivery: service available in 3 months technique:
Available services Due date reminder message (2219) Renewal of borrowed materials (503) Notice slips for reservations (185) List of one´s own loans (72) Availability of individual items (14) General query to the librarian (10) Paying of fees (18) Alert service (10)
Experiences steady growth of usage due date reminder the most popular service user comments very positive some technical problems benefits to the library now in use in several Finnish libraries
Future of the service funding to be sorted out technical future of the service –service family? (Coinlet)
Summary users have to be served where they are current technical solutions have to be used timely libraries have to adapt new technologies