2016

Travel Apps!

With ALA’s annual conference in Orlando just around the corner, travel is in the plans for many librarians and staff. Fortunately, as I live in Florida, I don’t have that far to go. But if you do, then you’re going to need some good apps. I travel frequently and have a few of my favorite apps that I use for travel, and I’d like to share them with you: Airline App of Choice I personally only use two airlines so I can only speak to their particular apps, but seriously, if you have a smartphone and you aren’t using it to hold tickets or boarding passes, you’re missing out. You can also use your app to check flight times and delays, book future travel, or just to play around (one of my airline’s apps lets you send virtual postcards). PackPoint Even if it’s just a weekend trip, this app is…

Original Content

iPads in the Library

Getting Started/Setting Things Up Several years ago we added twenty iPad 2s to use in our children’s and teen programming. They have a variety of apps on them ranging from early literacy and math apps to Garage Band and iMovie to Minecraft and Clash of Clans*. Ten of the iPads are geared towards younger kids and ten are slanted towards teen interests. Not surprisingly, the iPads were very popular when we first acquired them. We treated app selection as an extension of our collection development policy. Both the Children’s and Adult Services departments have a staff iPad they can use to try out apps before adding them to the programming iPads. We bought a cart from Spectrum Industries (a WI-based company; we also have several laptop carts from them) so that we had a place to house and charge the devices. The cart has space for forty iPads/tablets total. We use an…