Michael Moore discovered the subversive nature of librarians, so it should not come as a surprise that librarians at the Waikato Institute of Technology are at the forefront of the new technological revolution implementing blogs, wikis and the occasional podcast for good measure. And with Apple’s iPod having surpassed beer drinking as the most "in" thing among North American college students, providing a library tour that could be accessed via students' personal media players seemed like an obvious first step in implementing mobile technologies at the Waikato Institute of Technology library.
The traditional librarian-led group tour of the library has been complemented by mobile technologies to ensure it remains relevant to a new generation of learners while at the same time increasing accessibility. The self-guided podcast tour allows students to explore the library on their terms, deciding the route, the time and even the location of the tour. In this session I will describe the process we went through to develop the tour, the lessons we have learnt and present preliminary usage statistics. |
