Best mobile apps for librarians

by | May 23, 2014 | Apps, Libraries

Apps for Librarians

What are the best apps for librarians to know about and use? To answer that, consider two things: 1) Librarians use apps for their own professional work, and 2) Librarians recommend apps to their users for all sorts of tasks.

So asking this is kind of like asking “what are the best books for librarians?” It’s too broad!

In spite of that, there are some core, standard apps that everyone who recommends apps should be familiar with. These are core for the following reasons:

  • They have been around for more than a year and usage is growing.
  • They are part of an ecosystem that works as native mobile app, web app, and possibly a desktop app.
  • They offer easy ways to send information into and out of these apps.
  • They cover the most basic, useful things that people want to do with their mobile devices.

So given that, here’s my list:
(all are for both Android and iOS, except Fantastical and iBooks)

(These are in addition to the apps the come pre-installed on mobile devices).

There are many other apps in the areas of news, reference, productivity, multimedia, speech recognition, interactive ebooks, art, drawing, photo editing, music listening, music creation, and more.

But this is my basic list of apps for getting started. If I had just received my first mobile device, I would install all of these apps as a starting point.

To learn more about apps for use in libraries, sign up to be notified when my book is published:

Apps for Librarians: Using the Best Mobile Technology to Educate, Create, and Engage.

To start learning now, sign up for my online course with video demos of these apps and more:

Apps for Librarians and Educators.

p.s. If you liked this post, you might enjoy my newsletter: Mobile Apps News. It’s an easy way to stay current with the world of mobile apps for education.