The libraries go mobile

“The everyday lives of many families with children are busy and stressful, which means it is not easy to remember that there is a children’s event at the library on Saturday. Now you can sign up to an SMS service that automatically lets you know when there is a children’s event in your area.” Roskilde Libraries are inviting their users to make use of their mobiles in dialogue with the libraries.

Unwire has developed an SMS communications platform specially adapted for use by libraries. Our SDP messaging system enables a library to send news, information about events, lectures, competitions and much more to their users. The library is also able to receive messages from users, as well as images, video clips, registrations and reviews. Roskilde Libraries has great expectations of its new system, which has already begun to receive MMS messages for the gallery exhibition “Show us your tattoo”, to be shown on its website.

The mobile library is on its way

Martin Campostrini is a digital developer and responsible for the SMS system at Roskilde Libraries. “We aim continuously to modernise our communications and we chose an SMS solution because we like the idea of being able to interact with an audience in physical space. We believe this is something that will become more popular and create good contacts with our users,” explains Martin Campostrini, and continues:

“Within a very short time the response from our users has been extremely positive. People have signed up to receive SMS messages with news of children’s events and the timetable of the mobile library. In the long term we aim to enable our users to send comments and questions during a lecture or conference to an “SMS wall” projected onto the physical wall of the library.

And south of Køge…

Hillerød Libraries and Køge Libraries have also come a long way in the process of expanding mobile communications to reach a greater number of target groups, and potential new ones, than is currently possible with existing channels of communication. What they want to do is to catch citizens “here and now” via their mobiles rather than waiting for them to get home to their PC and read their e-mails or a physical letter from the library. In Køge they are developing a mobile readers club, which enables users to discuss a book via SMS and the library to send questions to members as the basis for the week’s discussion.