The m-biblio project is funded by JISC under the m-library innovation programme and runs from November 2011 until the end of May 2012. We have fairly ambitious aims for a relatively short project:
“We propose to enhance the learning and research activities of the University of Bristol’s academic community by developing a mobile application that can record and organise references to books, journals and other resources. These references can be added actively by scanning barcodes and QR codes, or passively by automatically recording RFID tags in items being used for study and research. With permission of the user, the application will submit anonymous usage data to their library. This innovation will provide library staff with a valuable set of user-derived usage statistics. It will be able to track which resources were used, and where. The library will therefore be given a rich seam of usage patterns, including data about library items that are often confined to branches such as periodicals, journals and reference books. The application will be made available to the wider FE/HE community for use in other institutions.”
The project will be managed by the IT Services R&D / ILRT group at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with the University Library.
I’ll expand on the aims of the project in future posts and this blog will be a useful forum to report and discuss issues (technical or otherwise). The amount of work at this point is a little daunting, but I see this as a “fun” project that will provide very useful outputs.
I really need to find a better theme for this blog. 🙂