Thursday 22 September 2011

So what are QR codes then? #cam23

Thanks 23 things for explaining this to me! Not having a smartphone, these had completely passed me by (until now!) I liked the University of Huddersfield's idea of using them on journal stands to link to the electronic version and on shelves to link to ebooks. Not knowing how many of our library users have smartphones, I'm not sure what the take-up would be here, but it would be interesting to try. This is my QR code to link to the ebooks@cambridge webpages:
qrcode
As for how they can be used in libraries, there seem to be so many possibilities to provide access to resources, information and help via QR codes. In terms of drawbacks, I suppose even if they can be made to look prettier, the library could begin to look very cluttered if these were all over every available flat surface! Some thought would need to go into this to avoid QR overload and how to make it clear to library users what each QR code would do/take them to so they know which ones they are interested in and which to ignore.

2 comments:

  1. Wouldn't it be great if we could have a QR code for each of our ebooks, so students could link to them direct? Think we'd need to make sure the ebooks were formatted for phones properly first!

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  2. It would be great, Sarah! It would definitely be worth checking the ebooks could be accessed on phones first to avoid disappointed library users, and it would mean a lot of QR codes but users might find them helpful!

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