Tablet Popularity and Libraries

The explosion of tablet devices is proving to be a bit more disruptive than I had inititally anticipated. A new article has an interesting infographic that focuses in this case on the tablet's impact on journalism. An unsurprising result is that while use of online news sites on tablet devices is incredibly strong, users tend to stick to the big news sites and they aren't willing to spend money for online news services.

It'd be beneficical for librarians to start thinking about how this will apply to libraries, given the unavoidable shiift from desktop/laptop computing to mobile devices. As many as 79% of tablet users (who now are a staggering 11% of the population) used to use their desktop or laptop in getting news. And they are much more satisfied with the tablet experience. Libraries need to take heed of the trend and use it to their advantage. The good news is that libraries can play on the popularity of online journalism and eBooks while delivering a "value-added" experience on a tablet, especially as eBook lending practices and open access resources become more common.

Libraries' main problem, however, is that many of the materials online cannot be reached via Google. It is imperative that initiatives like OAI-MH start to move their systems closer to public visability. Imagine the satisfaction an iPad user could have looking through digital collections on their device that they couldn't have found via Google. Perhaps they were fed the collection through RSS. Maybe this could all be done through an app that houses basically the OAIster union catalog (see OAIster. The potential here is great.

Realistically, though, the hurdles loom large. It's simply hard to break out of the Google mindset these days. Even so, optimizing collections and services for use on tablets and mobile devices will be a major first step. Users of tablets, referencing the infographic, are not young, tend to be well-educated, and thus they might have a demand for the kind of information online collections/catalogs can offer. The key will be persuading them to come to it versus just Googling it and finding, on average, fairly low-quality results.