I am playing catch-up in many areas right now, and as a result there hasn’t been as much activity here.  Hopefully the time of less activity has reached a middle…

An interesting new feature that has begun to appear in OPACs is the ability to send the location/call# of an item to your cell phone as a Short Message Service (SMS) text.  The Iowa City Public Library has implemented this into their Innovative (III) catalog, as you can see in this example.  It becomes the equivalent of writing yourself a quick note for when you are physically in the library to find the item.

While this service might seem to be targeted to a small portion of library users, I suspect that it is worthwhile to implement. if only because the people who will use it will find it exceptionally handy.

found via The Shifted Librarian

Semacode is an open system for generating url encoded barcodes (not the standard striped variety, but the square crossword puzzle-ish variety) for any url you want.  Mobile phones would then be able to use these to connect with resources.

This would be interesting as a way to connect library items and handouts with related websites.  The possibilities are limited at the moment since it requires someone to have a web-enabled mobile phone with the software installed, but there is a definite potential to this.

It reminds me a bit of the CueCat, without the commercial lock-in and resulting controversy.

from Catalogablog