23 Mobile Things - Thing 17 : Connecting to Community

Thing 17 is about using local apps to connect with our communities. 

One app that I use, although admittedly not too often, is for one of our local TV news stations. NNC-Now from our Northlands News Center. It's easy to pop up on my phone when I'm looking for a quick update or a current news story. I do hate that 1st up is an advertisement but I understand it pays their bills.  

Here are a few snips:

Another "local app" that I use  is 511MN from our MN Dept of Transportation. This app provides details on road conditions, road construction/detours, and crashes that might affect traffic movement. I use this often during the winter to check road conditions. I travel about 1/2 hour each way to & from work so this is handy for determining my best route of travel during bad weather. 

Here are some snips:

You can zoom in to view closer details. 

The icons depict various conditions. 

You can click on the icons for more details. 

Another app that I love that isn't a "local app" but you can use to find local restaurants is OpenTable. I simply love this app! Locate, reserve and you're ready to go!

Thing 17 -- ELM Tools

03/17/2008
Well I have to admit I have a link for ELM on our library website but I don't use the ELM resources very often nor do I suggest them to library patrons. I do have separate links for EBSCO (using "MegaFile") and ProQuest but the remaining ELM links have not promoted as heavily.

Gale -- I, like others it seems, was not able to get the RSS feed working. The feed symbol showed up but I rec'd an error msg when pasting the URL. IF it worked I think this would be useful when researching for a project or paper.

EBSCO -- Page Composer was "ok" but I think there are much better options out there for creating webpages ... but maybe I'm tainted by having 13 years experience in webpage design.

ProQuest -- I did like this feature of creating a "web page" (actually just a way to send your research results via e-mail) ... being able to add notes or comments is a great advantage and just that little extra reminder about why you liked or kept a certain webpage.

NetLibrary -- Yet another offering of ways to save, share, and comment on research items. I wasn't able to fully explore this since my NetLibrary logon & password weren't working for me ... this has happened for me more than once in the past with NetLibrary. I sent a logon/password help request but still have not yet had a response ... all this discourages me from using their product.

How can these tools benefit us? Since we are an academic library and the majority of our patrons are our students these are good ways to help them keep track of their research resources.