BPL Mobile Web

In the past few years there has been a rapid expansion in the number of internet enabled "smart phones." Like all libraries, Bangor Public does its best to keep up with the technology being used by its patrons. To that end, we have created a mobile version of our website designed to be viewed on devices like iphones or blackberries. Its called BPL Mobile and can be found at this link or on our home page.

What's Different?

Almost all of the content available on our main web site is also available on the mobile web site. You can order a library card, find out when we are open, access the Ask a Librarian page, and much more all on the go. The biggest difference is that it has been scaled down for viewing on a smaller screen. We've done our best to keep our web sites original look. You will see a smaller version of the Bangor Public Library banner as well as the green and blue color scheme. At the same time we have tried minimizing things that will slow download times. A lot of the images have been eliminated and the content from several pages has been incorporated together. Because there is no standard screen size for mobile devices we have also set the text to automatically collapse or expand to fit whatever screen it is being viewed on. That's why if you look at the site in a regular web browser the text streams off to the edge of the screen. Several web pages, like the blog and the events calender, could not be reformatted for mobile use since we do not have the authority to change their coding.

Talk to us .... please

A small confession: I don't own an iphone, blackberry or any other mobile device. Since I completed the prototype of the mobile web, I have been going around hitting up people I know who own these things so I could look at it. (I think some of them were a little annoyed when they found out I didn't want to talk to them I just wanted to play with their toy) As a result, I have not spent a lot of time testing the site on mobile devices. So I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of it and what needs to be changed. I'd especially like to hear from those of you with iphones. All of my friends seem to be crackberry addicts. You can post your comments to the blog or email me at jriordan@bpl.lib.me.us Thanks.

Jim Riordan