Text a Librarian at ALA Annual in Chicago

By SLJ Staff -- School Library Journal, 5/28/2009

Those attending the American Library Association’s (ALA) annual conference in Chicago this July will have a new service to help them navigate their way around—Text a Librarian.

ALA has partnered with Mosio to maximize the conference experience by offering mobile information through a service called "Text an ALA Ambassador.” And with an estimated 25,000 librarians and information professionals expected to show up, there are bound to be lots of questions about the conference’s many seminars, committee meetings, educational programs, exhibitor locations, registration process—yes, and even fun things to do in the windy city.

Attendees to the July 9-15 conference at the McCormick Place Convention can text questions from their mobile phones and receive an answer from one of 250 volunteer ALA Ambassadors who will utilize Mosio’s Text a Librarian technology to quickly respond.

“We are excited to partner with Mosio on our first-ever mobile information service,” says John Chrastka, ALA’s Director for Membership Development. “Adding this mobile element to the helpful service that Ambassadors already provide will benefit conference attendees, speakers and exhibitors to get the most out of their show experience by being able to get all the information they need while on the go.”

Currently being used in a number of public and academic libraries across the country, Mosio’s Text a Librarian service enables libraries to easily implement SMS/Text Messaging to reference and patron services. Patrons text questions to their libraries, and librarians respond by typing answers on a private Web site.

“Offering Text a Librarian at ALA’s biggest event of the year is a perfect use of the technology,” says Noel Chandler, Mosio CEO and cofounder. “We created the service by asking librarians what would make an SMS reference solution easy to implement and use, so having it available to everyone at the conference is very exciting."