Simply put, the main aim of this project is to look at the potential for smart phones to be used for the recording and organisation of bibliographic information for students within a library context. In addition, the app developed will also provide useful usage information to the library.
Broadly, the main objectives of the project will be to look into what is and what is not currently possible.
This project is effectively looking at an area which has not been studied much before. Some of the phone based technology necessary to test some of the ideas contained within the project is not yet widely available. Therefore, as we progress through the project we will begin to get a much better idea of what is and isn’t feasible at the current time. Once we’ve worked out the areas we can effectively develop, the primary objective will be to get a prototype service up and running which will be tested within one or two faculties at the University.
Primary sub-objectives will be to:
- try and gauge whether students would actually utilise the technology were it to be made widely available (this will be based largely upon evaluating how useful the service will be to them)
- look at the benefits (and costs) to the library itself.
Measuring the success of a project objectively is often relatively problematic, especially for one which is only going to deliver a prototype service. However, given that our objective is to deliver a service for both students and the library the success of this can relatively easily be measured.
More important will be to try and quantify how useful the new service is, especially in relation to existing methodologies (pen and paper?? Endnote?? Endnote Web??). We can obviously do this by evaluating the processes both parties employ currently (and gauging their satisfaction with these) versus their reaction to the service we provide. Therefore, if a student using our app says they will never again go back to writing their references by hand because the app makes it so much easier and more reliable, we’ll know we’ve cracked it.