I just finished a brief talk and discussion about mobile library services for Library Journal’s Tech Summit, and I wanted to pick up very briefly here on a subject that’s been tickling the back of my mind for a couple of weeks. This is an unfinished thought.. feel free to complete it.

The trend to associate collection items with latitude and longitude and then build mobile or even desktop apps that take advantage of that data is overwhelming. It’s overwhelming and I’ll add that I believe it to be *good*. Sure it’s helpful to make mobile-friendly versions of library websites with responsive layouts, but the “where-ness” of the mobile web is really best leveraged through these apps that push library services in new directions. I love displaying library items in context, outside of library walls like so many of these apps do, but I’m thinking now about a different kind of mobile “where-ness”.

The first where-ness I described is literal. Longitude, Latitude. Simple metadata. Clear use cases and applications. The second where-ness is a little different though, it’s less concrete and more about the intricacies of our interaction with media in different contexts. Consider for example the difference between reading The Adventures of Huck Finn in a classroom, versus reading it in a treehouse. Or what about books you might consider ‘vacation reading’ and where they actually get read? Do I have a different experience reading The Lord of the Rings while solo-camping in the Sierra, rather than in my hammock in my front yard? You bet. Do I have different songs that I play when I’m driving rather than chilling out on my couch? Yes. How about certain songs that I play when I’m driving in different regions? Certainly.

The point is that places and contexts invoke feeling, some of which is personal, and some of which is common across user groups. Places are in fact far more than points on a map, they are flexible based on the experiences you bring to them, and they change with time and use. Now that media is mobile, we interact with and generate changes in place very differently. I believe there is room to do mobile media development that accounts for or leverages this more complex version of “where-ness”, but…

I don’t have the answer! Anyone? Thoughts?