Event Held 7th March 2011

Evolving Content for Mobile Delivery

Synthesis of Workshop Discussion and Recommendations

OpportunitiesThere was general agreement that mobile delivery offers huge opportunities for students, for universities, for libraries and for publishers. There is huge potential to increase the flexibility of access to quality academic content and allow students to make more use of time in their studies. As the profile of the student body evolves and changes, it may make it easier to reach a broader and more diverse user population (examples might include work-based learners or learners in countries with poor internet access). More importantly perhaps it makes it possible to make academic content easily accessible to younger students for whom the mobile device is the channel of choice for learning. To ignore this opportunity is to take a major risk of libraries and the content they broker becoming less relevant to this ‘new’ group of learners. Furthermore, the most sophisticated devices such as the iPad open up opportunities to go beyond text and develop a new interactive form of eBook (such as those developed by the Open University and launched on iTunesU) incorporating video, images, audio and interactive activities.

ChallengesIt was felt, however, that, at this point in time the challenges are considerable. These were identified particularly from the librarians’ perspective as they are increasingly aware of the needs and frustrated to be unable to respond. Authentication and access management are complex and off-putting to users. There is work to do to develop business models for eBooks and, indeed, apps which can be licensed by libraries for flexible use by their communities. Another major challenge is that there is as yet very little substantial evidence about student preferences and behaviour. Publishers are unlikely to commit significant resources in this area if they have yet to be convinced that students will be prepared to read academic content from small mobile screens. This is a circular challenge as we need content to be available in order to demonstrate to students what can be provided and to elicit meaningful feedback. There is currently very little high quality content available which works effectively on mobile devices, whatever the claims of publishers and suppliers. Developments will need to take into account the different types and models of device students will be using, ranging from standard phones to iPads and the variety of platforms. The content which is available is invariably text-based

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RecommendationsFrom this discussion, a long list of practical recommendations was developed as follows:

1. Librarians and publishers should work together to further develop detailed requirements for effective mobile delivery

2. More research should be conducted with students to build the evidence base re preferences and behaviour

3. Systems and processes should be developed to collect user data and make it available across the sector to inform future developments

4. Librarians and publishers should work together to identify and evaluate a range of options for new business models for eBooks – to include micro-payments at one extreme and open access at the other.

5. There should be general and widespread adoption of emerging common standards such as ePub and html5

6. Publishers and librarians should pool their expertise, supported by JISC to experiment with new forms of content and delivery

7. Priority should be given to exposing reference type material which works well on small screens (dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc.) possibly linked to journal content.

8. There should be joint investment in technical innovation in this area.

Suggested next steps

Respond to the JISC call and assess what contribution this is will make to the above

Set up a joint task group including representatives from the Library and Publishing communities, with support from JISC

Gill Needham 4/4/11

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