Resumen
The article discusses advantages of mobile access to digital libraries. Digital library patrons can perform on-the-spot research to cross boundaries between physical and digital resources, engage in opportunistic reading and annotation, use digital content in concert with access to human mediators and interweave mobile information access with other activities such as writing or organizing materials. Library patrons can quickly search for new references in a mobile digital catalog while they are browsing the physical shelves. It leads us to a set of technological implications for the design of electronic books and other devices for mobile access to digital libraries. These implications include standardized document representations, and appropriate software functionality and hardware form factor. The examples relevant in the digital library context include the ability to support rich forms of searching and link following from within documents, to annotate documents in a fluid manner and to manage those annotations, to share documents or perhaps annotated portions of documents as a means of collaborating with peers and experts. Connectivity remains problem for mobile devices in physical libraries. Without appropriate infrastructure, the buildings themselves can render cell phones and wireless networks useless.