Date: 6/16/10
Location: phone interview
Interviewer: Rachael
Note taker: Alison
Script: Are you interested in participating in an interview about mobile internet use? It should take
about approximately 20-30 minutes. If you qualify for the interview, we will give you a $25 Amazon.com
gift certificate. We’re looking for students/faculty who currently own a mobile device that can access
the internet.
Do you own a smartphone
or other mobile device with
Internet? What kind?
iPhone
Are you a student?/What is
your occupation? What
year? Field of study?
Faculty/instructor/special collections librarian
Script (yes): Great. It sounds like you’re just the person we want to talk to. First, we’d like you to read
through and sign this consent form. Do you mind if I record our conversation?
Script (no): I’m sorry. We’ve already heard from several people in your department, and we want to get
a range on experience. Thanks for your interest in talking to us though.
Do you own any additional
mobile devices that can
access the internet?
What other electronic
devices do you own?
Laptop? iPod?
Do you plan to purchase any
more in the near future?
Desktop computer at work and home
iPod just for music
no
How long have you owned
your device?
Since October
How do you use it during the
“extension of my brain” “I think I’ve become smarter on my phone”
day? For work/school? For
leisure?
If not mentioned above, are
there other activities that
you do with your device?
Take pictures, upload files to
internet, shopping, banking,
making reservations?
Do you visit websites on
your device? Which ones?
What is your favorite app or
mobile site?
Smartphone: 4square, calories, personal email, Read 4-5 newspapers
every day at lunch, will shop
Meetings: will check work email, will look something up if someone
referenced something in the meeting
“most people in olden days would use a laptop, I use my smartphone”
Took notes on smartphone during site visit lecture
Grocery shopping, packing, bart
Voice memos when going home from work
iStanford application (map, train)
check in to airplanes, figure out tip, sale price app
barcode scanner, who has it cheaper
“I use it for pretty much just about everything. It’s incredible”
Take pictures a lot for work (thinks work should pay for it)
(how big is that file, will take a picture and send it)
Took photo of reading room because it was so empty
Take picture of foursquare because going to be using it for my job (can
use for a presentation)
“Picture of a call number, if I want to show my dad”
Took a picture of decommissioned item that they were throwing out
Emails it to herself, prints a picture (doesn’t keep photo)
Gets rid of picture after sending to patron because it’s a personal phone
Iphone doesn’t open attachments (or if it does I haven’t figured out how
to use it)
Half and half
A little more lopsided on web stuff
Text message. Always text messaging my friends
Facebook
Foursquare
news
How do you find apps?
Do you use your device in
class or for instructional
purposes? How?
Freshman instruction: laptop, projector
Virtual archive in second life (can’t get to it on mobile phone)
Special collections is still item based, not device based
Sometimes students come in with phone and say ‘I need this book’
Don’t know if they would know how to use a finding aid from mobile
phone
Guessing that they looked it up in OPAC and emailed it to themselves,
have all the bibliographic info
“They have it on their phone. They aren’t bringing in pieces of paper
anymore.”
15% come in with their phone
The rest want to use computer because they know what it looks like
Other people have a full list in notebooks
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the tide starts turning that way” (toward using
phone)
Class where we teach students how to create mobile devices
Not really library geared
Do you often look for
information on your device?
What kind of information
are you generally looking
for? If you have your laptop
or a computer nearby, do
you prefer to use one device
over another for searching?
Have you used your mobile
device for research/
searching? What resources
do you use to search?
Where do you go for
content (books, video etc)?
How do you find content?
Do you read on your device?
For how long? What do you
read?
Do you take notes or
highlight while reading on
devices? Do you use a
special program?
No (other than newspapers)
Tired of holding my phone, not as ergonomically comfortable
Lost interest very quickly on reading books
Do you use library services?
Do you use a library or
database service on your
mobile device? How did you
learn about it?
Have you run into any
difficulties trying to access
resources or use a system
where you have to log in?
Stanford app has library section
When AT&T working, it does work
Application has contact a librarian, features of app geared toward library
Pulling from new OPAC, displays better on phone
Difficult to use library app
“I know I’m going to spend a lot of time staring. I would rather do that on
a computer”
Maybe if I had an ipad, it wouldn’t be so bad, but not really interested in
carrying it with me
Not using my mobile phone
Do you notice if you use the
cellular network over the
wifi network?
Cellular part, I don’t understand wifi
No idea how to tap into it, not sure how it works
Think I’m just on the normal AT&T
Can you tell me about a time
that you tried to do
something on your mobile
device that did not work
well?
AT&T, can’t make calls on it
Flash thing
A lot of websites I can’t get the information simply because of the flash
thing
That is incredibly annoying
Have you ever used a mobile
website that links to other
materials that are not easy
to use on a mobile device?
How did you proceed? What
was your frustration level?
Do you use text messaging
often?
yes
Do you typically prefer to be
notified or alerted by text
message or by email?
Friends: text message
Library: email
“Text message to me means the same capacity to me as IM”
Instant, really quick hit
When you start to organize your information, what’s the most important
and what isn’t.
“To me, hey your book is in, that should be in an email format”
Have you ever sent yourself
information (either by text
or email) or kept notes in
some way so that you’ll have
information on the go?
Is there a service that you
would like on your mobile
device that you don’t
currently have? (Perhaps
find a way to relate this
question back to an activity
that they do to help them
think of ideas for this
question.)
If you have both your
laptop/desktop and your
mobile device in front of
you, how do you decide
which device to use for
certain activities?
Is there anything else I
should know about? Does
the note-taker have any
questions?
Other notes
Finding aid: hasn’t tried to access a finding aid
“even looking at the OAC on a normal screen is kind of painful. If it’s
painful on a normal screen, how much more difficult would it be on a
tiny screen.”
How do you use OAC? “for everything. Use it in instruction a lot”
It made a lot more sense to the students before the redo
65-70% of reading room users are not Stanford-affiliated (other scholars,
random public). Trying to describe a finding aid is a challenge. Trying to
find ways around OAC. Stanford launched its own site
Teaches freshman intro to special collections
“the finding aid is the bread and butter”
“if it was like the way it used to be…like when you typed in a search
term…could easily do find and it would go through pages for you”
“now I don’t know where I am anymore”
“If it was better displayed and had it on my iphone, if I was in the reading
room and was talking to the student, look at this finding aid. Let me see
your phone, I’ll put you in the right place and you can look at in your
dorm room.”
“if I was helping someone individually in the reading room and they were
using their phone, I could help them find it.”
Mobile librarian model, that would really work
“Some institutions are doing that, and I think that would really help”
Rely on paper finding aids still, but wants everything to be digital
PDFs of finding aids, as long as you can search them
Can’t print from a mobile device anyway
Highlight search terms in yellow (like old way from OAC)
Send an email to public services desk and would ready for them in the
morning
“Finding aid is the key”
Calisphere is awesome, use that in classes
Mobile apps for Duke and Northwestern
One stop shopping for California
App is finding aids, image collection
Separate them out like Duke (created by Stanford students)
I don’t know if it should be broken up by database…some way where it
could tap into the digital resources that everyone keeps building in
idiosyncratic databases. If we could do that for digital resources, that
would be pretty intense”
“finding aid, resources, digital resources”
Not just for mobile, in general
Special app:
What would be awesome
Finding aids are very flat, not a lot of visuals, very hierarchical, cuts out
the visual learner
Visual learners will gravitate to calisphere and then will look at metadata
Then question is how do I get it?
Marry image (capture kid’s attention) and finding aid
Not great to separate out finding aid and images
No one wants to read finding aid
Students say “don’t you just have some pictures I could look at?”
Way to integrate images into finding aids, make them more interesting
OPACs have cover of book, trying to make the catalog interesting, why
aren’t catalogs doing the same thing
“why can’t we at least catch up to our librarian sisters?”
On a mobile device, why wouldn’t it translate? It would be like looking at
a webpage