One thing that having an iPhone and and iPad has taught me is that the future is mobile. Lots of recent studies and news items point in this direction.

I’ve been spending time thinking about this as part of a goal at my work. What I’ve read and seen show that our library services have to at least account for mobile access, if not focus primarily on that means of access instead of, say, access via a regular website or portal. This might seem like common sense and it is. But unfortunately we are far from where we should be in terms of being able to serve up valuable content in an easy-to-use mobile format to our users. I’ve learned that especially in our line of work — healthcare — there are quite a few applications and sites that are optimized for mobile, but there are also many others, especially those that are expensive to buy and serve up, that are either unfriendly to mobile altogether, or the provider expects us to pay a separate license for a mobile-friendly version. This is ridiculous.

Another hindrance is the fact that my company currently only supports mobile devices that are extremely limited in their functionality (Blackberries). This is changing but not quickly enough. This past week, for example, I was very happy to hear that a large part of our staff in international markets might begin using iPads. But the fact remains that it is hard to build a mobile strategy for content delivery based on devices that have limited functionality. This is complicated also because not every device functions the same way. We in the library do not have the luxury of limitless resources to devote to support for multiple mobile platforms in addition to all of the other work we do. We know that if we serve up mobile content, it has to be done in a compelling and user-friendly way, otherwise our users won’t bother to come back to us. To do this will take a lot of work.

Then there is the problem of getting our foot in the door with the people in our corporate IT group who support mobile devices to ensure that our content is made available on supported devices.

Another twist that I have a lot of personal interest in is the possibility for corporations to support or allow the use of personal mobile devices for business. For example, as I mentioned already, I have an iPhone as well as an iPad. I use these devices (especially the iPhone) for business use but it is my personal device and I am quite limited in what I have access to. Mainly I use the web version of our corporate email system to keep track of emails and calendar.  Although recognizing the risks and challenges for companies like mine, especially when they exist in a heavily regulated and risk-averse business like healthcare, I think support for personal mobile devices should be seriously considered.