I’ve been working on a short statement explaining why mobile learning technologies matter so much to academic libraries.

I want this statement to be clear, concise and compelling.

I would welcome your comments.

Why Mobile Matters

Learning doesn’t only happen in classrooms. Truly transformative learning reaches outside the classroom to connect new ideas to our daily lives. This isn’t radical. This is how people learn. Learning requires a person to actively do something with new information to connect to their own experience and assimilate into their understanding. That’s what makes knowledge.

Libraries are often referred to as information centers. We want to be knowledge centers. We want to work with our faculty to develop and deliver extraordinarily rich resource collections that encourage intellectual curiosity and inspire exploration. This is about books, but it is about much more. TBR Libraries provide eBooks, journals/eJournals, video/eVideo and other learning objects. This includes mobile apps.

Apps represent a new kind of learning resource. The best mobile apps blend text-based learning with other modes of learning. Consider the rich potential of new books which blend text, video and interactive animation in a focused way to make a thesis more than understood.

Many of our students carry smartphones, eReaders and tablet computers. As mobile technologies proliferate on our campuses, our faculty are excited about the potential for using these commonplace devices to increase student engagement and extend learning outside the classroom.

The rise of smartphones is not about voice and text messaging. It is about ubiquitous internet connection. Many students and faculty now live our lives with a constant, direct access to the internet wherever we go. We are always connected. We are always communicating. We are always learning.

Library resources need to be as easy to discover and use as Google and Wikipedia. We imagine a college where library books, journals, videos and other collections are available “on demand” when and where they are needed.

We want to partner with our faculty who see the huge learning potential of mobile teaching technologies. We want those faculty to have access to the resources, tools and best practices required to develop powerful new ways of teaching.

We want our administrations to understand their libraries as active partners for creativity, knowledge and innovation.

We want our students to trust their libraries to be available when and where they need them and to think of their librarians as learning guides who can make their learning easier and more effective.

We are committed to creating mobile-friendly library environments that are useful, relevant and convenient. We are committed to understanding the desired learning outcomes of our institutions and delivering library services that support those outcomes.

We are TBR’s mobile-friendly libraries, and we are ready to help.