Scholars and students who once had to travel to museums or libraries
to view collections of historic images can now do so by clicking on
their mobile device instead. The Duke University Libraries has
launched the DukeMobile, an university digital image collection
specifically formatted for an iPhone or iPod touch. It’s available
for free at the Apple App Store
(http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306796270&mt=8).
It includes thousands of photos and other artifacts that range from
early beer advertisements to materials on San Francisco’s
Haight-Ashbury scene in the 1960s. Although a growing number of
scholarly institutions offer images and other material online, Duke
is the first to offer collections that take advantage of the iPhone’s
design, navigation and other features, according to university
librarian Deborah Jakubs.
The collections are the latest addition to the DukeMobile suite of
applications, which has also expanded to include several feeds of
university news, along with emergency notifications and IT service
alerts. Duke University Libraries offers mobile users digital
materials from 20 collections — about 32,000 images overall —
covering women’s history, early American sheet music, Duke history
and other topics. The libraries will add new collections regularly as
they become available.
In addition to the library collections, DukeMobile’s offerings for
the iPhone and other mobile devices now include campus news feeds
about business, the environment, law, research and other categories,
as well as the latest stories from Duke Today and other campus
sources. The news section appears under an icon that will turn red to
notify users about campus emergencies or IT alerts.