Best mobile apps for librarians

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) (more…)