American Library Association Goes Mobile With Mosio for Annual Conference

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--When the world’s oldest and largest library association meets the nation’s biggest convention center, there is a lot of ground to cover. This year, the American Library Association (ALA) is partnering with Mosio to maximize attendee experience at its annual conference by offering mobile information via text messaging.

“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.”

An estimated 25,000 librarians and information professionals from across the U.S. and abroad will attend the ALA Annual conference, the largest gathering in the library industry. This year’s event, held in July at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, offers over 300 educational programs, 2,000 committee meetings and activities, and a massive convention center featuring over 1,000 exhibitors. Attendees have a lot of conference information to digest over a large space, including programming schedules, member services, exhibitor locations, and what to do while in Chicago.

Over the course of the 7 day conference, 250 volunteer ALA Ambassadors will utilize Mosio’s Text a Librarian technology to respond to questions from attendees wherever they are. The service, dubbed "Text an ALA Ambassador" for the conference, enables attendees to text questions from their mobile phones and ALA Ambassadors to answer via a web interface.

“We are excited to partner with Mosio on our first-ever mobile information service,” said 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.”

Launched at ALA Midwinter conference in Denver, Mosio’s Text a Librarian 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 website. The service is now being used in a number of public and academic libraries across the country.

“Offering Text a Librarian at ALA’s biggest event of the year is a perfect use of the technology,” said Noel Chandler, Mosio CEO and Co-Founder. “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."

In addition to in-person support at information desks, ALA Ambassadors will respond to text message inquiries during regular conference hours from Thursday, July 9^th through Tuesday, July 14^th.

About Mosio’s Text a Librarian

Accessible by over 250 million U.S. mobile phones, Text a Librarian is a mobile reference service technology developed for libraries utilizing Mosio’s award-winning mobile questions and answers technology and consulting with reference & patron services librarians to find out what would make it useful, accessible and affordable for libraries to use. For more information regarding Text a Librarian, please visit www.textalibrarian.com.

About ALA

The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 64,000 members. Its mission is to promote the highest quality library and information services and public access to information. ALA offers professional services and publications to members and nonmembers. www.ala.org