1. What Changes with Mobile?
Everything and Nothing

2. What doesn’t change?
 The User
 User needs vs. user context
 Content (versus format and display)
 Questions and improving the quality of
questions
 Creativity and human progress
 Stability = fossilization

3. What changes with mobile?
 The Ecosystem
 Communication devices move increasingly
from feature phones to smartphones
 Personal computing moves to a hybrid
environment of laptops and tablets (plus a
few power desktop anchors)
 In libraries the dominant mobile task
environments are based on answers,
communities and e-learning

11.  Content – duh.
 Format and display considerations
 The reading experience (PDF, App,
eBook, Wall, Tweets, etc.)
 The learning experience
 The entertainment experience
 Streaming versus downloading
 Instant and ‘live’ (Bloggie)

12.  Standards
 Apps versus HTML5
 XML
 ePub, Kindle Book, PDF, HTML5, etc.
 Tablets versus e-Reader experience
(human biology does not change quickly)

13.  Concept of Place
 Geo-IP
 Google Maps integration
 Sign in and Authentication
 Rights and permissions management
 Concept of ‘Place’ tied to ‘User’
 Geo-location

14.  Identity
 Personal phone versus home/family
phone
 Consequences for library cardholder
management
 Are librarians and library value systems in
conflict with the new ecosystem and
market values?
 Will adults continue to respect and trust
library straitjackets?

15.  Frictionless-ness
 Commerce
 Square (from Jack Dorsey founder of
Twitter)
 Embedded e-commerce ecology in
smartphones
 Death of QR codes
 $5/gallon gasoline . . . and the library
value proposition of ‘free’

16.  Frictionless-ness commerce
 In App purchasing and/or seamless buying?
 Commerce in a virtual goods space (start
with $billion market for gaming goods and
extend to other goods
 Other goods are a parallel commercial and
retail environment in ‘goods’ relevant to
libraries – e-books, streaming media, audio
like music MP3, lessons and
podcasts, articles, learning
objects, games, tests, etc.

17.  Opportunity
 1. Search personalization (e.g. Google)
 2. Push personalization (e.g. Facebook)
 3. Integration of
sound, video, text, mail, communication, soci
al and business cohorts
 4. Advertising
 5. Major changes in usability: Voice
response like Siri, gesture interfaces, face
recognition, geo-restrictions, sentiment
search, semantic, linked data, data
mining, etc.

18.  Business Models
 Pressure on consumer and institutional models
as purchasing agent
 Pressure on retailer model
 Subscription models for e-Content (like Netflix
for entertainment but extended to e-books from
Amazon, 24Symbols or Bookish, etc.)
 On demand and micropayment models
 Author embedded models like Pottermore
 Books as apps or as vehicles for ads &
purchases

19.  Google (Android partners, Motorola acquisition)
 Microsoft (Skype acquisition)
 Facebook (post-IPO)
 eBay
 Apple (iTunes and App Store)
 Twitter (& Square)
 Research in Motion (as an acquisition target?)
 Amazon
 Open Source or any company on the fringes
that is disruptive as a new player or an
acquisition target)

21.  Living in a parallel world
 Serving a hybrid world
 Changing their strategic planning models to add
more stretch into the environmental
scans, creative thinking and imagination
 Bringing staff and profession along the curve
 12 steps . . .

22.  Differential Adoption
 The generations are adopting at much
different rates and for different purposes
 Boomers are the primary adopters of e-
reading
 Adult women are a major market for e-
gaming
 Students are resisting e-textbook adoption
– for now.
 Tablet adoption (ownership) doubled over
Christmas 2011 (Pew)

23.  On the sidelines of a war
 Watching the emerging commercial
battlefield (foundation vs. application)
 Android, RIM, Windows, Apple iOS, other . . .
 The end of the flip phone or feature phone
 At the same time as the end of CD and DVD
and more e-Books and e-content formats
 Dealing with new potential walled gardens for
e-content (app stores, e-formats, single
device stuff, etc.)

24.  Differential Behaviors
 The generations have very different attitudes
towards mobile:
 Privacy
 Ownership and access rights
 Information ethics
 e-Commerce
 Reading
 Forced adoption
 Usage tracking
 Government involvement

25.  Digital Filtering
 Are we comfortable with content filtering and use
filtering based on:
 age, race, gender, location?
 policy (criticism, definition of porn)?
 the device owner or app store rules and policies?
 adjustment of search algorithm by personal
history, behavior timeline, and user profile?
 Whither freedom to read?
 Ownership, rental, options?
 Balance in the use, read and purchase
ecology

26.  Address our internal struggles with:
 Fiction versus non-fiction content
 Books versus databases
 Marketing and promotion ecosystem of content
 Historical content (e.g. PDF repositories)
 Printing and end user retro-conversions (hardcopy, 3D,
CD, DVD, USB, etc. - OMG)
 Role of QR Codes, Barcodes, RFID, etc. (plane tickets)
 Mobile will be the dominant personal technology but
never the sole form factor
 Being a valid relationship in the hybrid ecology
 ...

27.  Playing with vendor apps
 Developing Library apps – learn by doing
 Most good content vendors have first or second
generation apps to play with and many are free
 Many ILS vendors too including ILS enhancement
layers like Bibliocommons and LibraryThing.
 It’s too early to form anything more than an opinion
and those who don’t play aren’t learning fast
enough.
 Use a smartphone.

30.  Pilot and experiment with mobile social
cohorts in the library
 Clubs
 Classes (mobile training or extended learning)
 Reading cohorts and book clubs
 Associations
 Fundraising
 Meetings
 Teams (business or sport)

31.  Actively lobby and educate to ensure that the
emerging mobile ecosystem supports the values
and principles of librarianship for balance in the
rights of end users for use, access, learning and
research.
 Support vendors and laws to be as agnostic as
possible by ensuring that, as afar as possible
your services and content offerings support the
widest range of devices, formats, browsers, and
platforms.

32.  Design for frictionless access using such
opportunities as geo-IP and mobile ready
websites
 Test everything in all browsers – mobile or not.
 Invest in usability research and testing and
learn from it and share your learning.
 Watch key developments in major publishing
spaces – kiddy lit, textbooks, e-
learning, fiction, etc.

33.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 The REAL revolution was the Internet and the
Web.
 The hybrid ecology is winning in the near term
for operating systems and content formats.
 This is good since competition drives
innovation.
 Engage in critical thinking not raw criticism. Be
constructive.
 Critical thinking is not part of dogma or religious
fervor or fan boy behavior.

34.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 Perfectionism will not move us forward at this
juncture.
 Really understand the digital divide and
remove your economic and social class
blinkers
 Get over library obsession with statistics and
comprehensiveness.
 Get excellent at real measurements, sampling
and understanding impact and satisfaction.
(Analytics, Foresee, Pew)

35.  This is an evolution not a revolution
 We need to revisit the concept of
preservation, archives, repositories, and
conservation.
 Check out new publishing models like
Flipboard.
 Watch for emerging book enhancements and
other features that will challenge library
metadata, selection policies, and collection
development.

36. Broadband
 You must clearly understand the latest US FCC
Whitespace Broadband Decision – THIS IS
TRANSFORMATIONAL and going global
 Net neutrality, kill switches . . .
 Local wired, mobile access ‘everywhere’ to
the home and workplace on a personal basis
 Geo-awareness: GIS, GPS, GEO-IP, etc.
 Wireless as a business strategy (Starbucks)
 Mobile dominates the largest generation

37. Speaking of e-
Books...

39. Borders Kobo, B&N Nook, Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony, etc. . . .

48. GBS

53. Context
 Information and Knowledge-based economy
 Globalization
 Canada is a leading education economy
 Stress on core markets (US)
 Changing knowledge about current crop of
students (genome, eye tracking, gaming, IQ,
ICT and social behaviours, etc.)
 Information ethics and copyright

54. Books
 Reception of Reading and Experience
 Fiction – paper, e-paper
 Non-Fiction
 Articles - disaggregation
 Media – physical vs. streaming
 Learning Objects
 Stories vs. Pedagogy

55. Technology Context
 Cloud (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS)
 Laptops and Tablets
 Mobility / Smartphones
 Bandwidth (Wired, WiFi, Whitespace)
 Learning Management Systems
 Streaming video and audio vs. download
 HTML5 and Apps – the battle
 Advertising auction models and ‘product’
 New(ish) Players (Amazon, Apple, G, B&N, Uni’s,
states/provinces/nations)

56. The BASICS
 Containers for Pedagogy
 Created by Teams (e.g. 40,000 authors a year
for Cengage alone) (yes that’s a lot of lawyers)
 Copyright and complicated layering of millions
of rights (creators - pictures, graphics, video,
tests, text, documents, etc.)
 Serious Lawsuits: Feist, Texaco, LSUC, Tasini,
NatGeo, Authors Guild, GBS, etc.
 Complex extension opportunities (links to
articles, databases, library assistance, etc.)

57. Textbook Challenges
 Format Agnosticism
 Browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari
 Devices: Macintosh, PC Desktops & Laptops
 Mobile: Laptops, Tablets (iPad, Fire, etc.)
 Mobile: Smartphones (iPhone, Blackberry,
Android, Windows, etc.)
 Container: PDF, ePub, .mobi, Kindle, etc.
 Learning Management System: Blackboard /
WebCT, D2L, Moodle, Sakai, etc.
 Purchasing (Amazon, B&N, Chegg, CengageBrain,
Apple Store, University Textbook Store, etc.)

58. Should we tie students and professors to
a specific and proprietary device,
operating system, browser, or LMS?

59. What is the priority?
 Price, Cost, Value, ROI
 Managing or Mandating the Adoption Curve
 Learning and Progress
 Societal Impact = 17%, 40%, 70%?

60. Death of the Textbook?
 Shallow pool innovation – e-copies, really?
 Open Access Textbooks?
 Coursepacks and e-coursepacks?
 Apple?
 Google?
 Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Cengage
 Etc.

61. What is Changing?
1. Componentization of pedagogy
2. Enhanced textbooks (tests, tracking, video,
etc.)
3. Advanced e-learning
4. Ability to archive
5. The purchaser matrix (individual student,
class, institutions, state/province/country)
6. Textbook boundaries (library links first…)

62. Pricing Models
 Buy the print copy
 Buy the exact electronic copy of the print
 Buy both (bundling)
 Rent the print or e-copy for a specified period
 Create custom coursepacks in print or e-copy
 Buy at the course level included in fee
 Buy at the institution / enterprise level
 Buy at the state/province level
 Espresso Book Machines
 Pay-per-use, micro-payments, ‘Square’ and
phones

63. This era will see a Fundamental
Reimagining the Textbook
For the present there will be those who
resist and the resisters will be the
majority.

65. Can we frame the e-book issue so
that it can be addressed rationally?

66. Books

67. Fiction

68. Non-Fiction

69. E-Learning

70. Be More Open to the Users’ Paths -
Filtering

71. What Would You Attempt If
You Knew You Would Not
Fail?

73. A Third Path

80. There are no knights on
horses in technology.

81. The VAST majority of library use is virtual and is dwarfed by all information use

82. ‘Reading’ trumps print books . . .

83. 7 Learning Styles

85. Stephen Abram, MLS, FSLA
VP strategic partnerships and markets
Cengage Learning (Gale)
Cel: 416-669-4855
stephen.abram@cengage.com
Stephen’s Lighthouse Blog
http://stephenslighthouse.com
Facebook, Pinterest: Stephen Abram
LinkedIn / Plaxo: Stephen Abram
Twitter: @sabram
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