Handheld Librarian kicked off today with a keynote from Tom Peters, CEO of TAP information services. He focused on providing reference via mobile services & started by focusing on some statistics that talked about how rapidly cell phone technology has been adopted (he asserted that the cell phone became popular faster than the toaster 
).
He observed that reference services tended to focus on solving information-need type questions and likewise were often short & simple. He also focused on relevance of ‘social search’ as opposed to ‘web search’ for providing reference services. His list of guidelines for developing mobile reference services (simple, short, open, crowd-based) certainly build on that theme. His theme was that reference needed to become a mobile & 24/7 based service – yes he did say “lose the desk.”
Some of the technologies he talked about were vark.com, question point. Any other comments?
I’ll happily roam around with a “communication badge” like Star Trek if we can find a way to strap my laptop to me!