What are Personal Digital Assistants?
Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) are compact devices used to help organize information and services. While personal computer (PC) sales continue to drop (2001 was the first year that computer sales were lower than the previous year since the 1980s), PDAs are still selling like hotcakes. Reaching one million units sold is a bellwether for new technology and the original PalmPilot (introduced in 1996) reached that milestone in 18 months; faster than the PC, the color television, the video cassette recorder, and the cellular telephone. Overall, the PDA market (specifically palm-sized and handhelds) is expected to more than double to 30 million units by 2004, up from the 13.5 million PDAs sold in 2001. To put the number of PDAs sold into perspective--the International Data Corporation states that 48 million personal computers were sold in 2000.
Features between these device types are starting to blend requiring strategic choices based upon several differentiating factors including size/weight, storage capacity, battery life, applications needed, voice communication support, screen resolution, and handwriting recognition. This convergence is evidenced by the recent announcement by Motorola to pull out of the traditional pager business in favor of the two-way paging technologies in smart telephones. Newer PDA devices have improved to include: memory expansion cards; micro hard drives; digital cameras; barcode readers; Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers; portable keyboards and standard expansion interfaces. New built-in features such as faster processors, MP3 audio, Internet access, voice communication capabilities, and wireless data synchronization further expand PDA versatility.
How do Wireless Networks fit in?
Handheld can also support various wireless network protocols. Wireless adoption has been slowed by competing and incompatible standards like Bluetooth, HiFi and others. So until there is either seamless interoperability or a national wireless standard, wireless access will be limited and risky. With a local or national wireless network, users will be able to perform many additional functions not currently available, helping them to move beyond the desktop. These include the ability to browse and search Web pages, Web databases, e-books and reference materials. With or without a wireless network, handheld devices allow a lot of data to be stored. The U.S. Navy and federal employees already use PDAs in a variety of ways, and now Naval Libraries are also exploring ways to provide library users and librarians with innovative PDA technology for easy search and retrieval.
Navy Librarians Prepare for New Tools
As wireless networks and PDAs improve and become cheaper, they will increasingly become the platform of choice for accessing information. Navy libraries will be well- positioned to take advantage of the PDA revolution by making enhancements to the way they provide information to library users.
Build Digital Content – For many reasons (space constraints, user demand, etc.,) it is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity to provide digital access to as many information resources as possible. These resources include journals, books, standards, conference proceedings, technical reports, technical manuals, etc. Once in digital form, it will be easier to repurpose information for use on a PDA. For example, the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Ruth H. Hooker Research Library has negotiated rights to distribute digital journal information to users through 13 Navy libraries across the country through its newly developed TORPEDO Ultra system (http://torpedo.nrl.navy.mil). Given the extremely small screen size, many Web sites and Web-accessible resources are not readily transferable to a PDA. Different, more concise interfaces will need to be constructed to facilitate access to these resources, requiring additional software and skill sets.
Build Infrastructure – Encourage and plan for the appropriate technological infrastructure to support PDA access via wireless networks. This would include converting Web sites to dynamically generated sites based on databases to allow for the same content to be displayed differently depending upon the client -- desktop, telephone, PDA, etc. Most organizations realize the need to simplify Web site maintenance. This means moving the content maintenance away from the technical staff and to the people that know the information. With the pending advances in wireless technologies (surpassing standard Ethernet speeds), and the advancing storage capacities of PDAs, there will be essentially no difference between a PDA and a desktop unit except for the screen size and resolution. Libraries can purchase PDAs for staff use and can build experimental wireless networks to learn firsthand about the promise and potential of PDAs and wireless networks.
Expand and Rethink Traditional Services – As users become increasingly detached from the desktop, new or enhanced traditional services will be needed, including "document delivery to anywhere services." Existing services will also need to be rethought-examined in light of these new technologies to gain the maximum advantage of using wireless technology.
Create Outreach Programs – Rather than assume that the needs of the target user group are understood, meet with them! As more and more services become digital and require fewer trips to the library, library staff will need to increasingly reach out to users to understand their changing information needs. Direct contact will also allow staff to assess the acceptance and usefulness of existing services and determine future methods of providing services. Outreach will also give librarians the opportunity to market existing services, and provide ad hoc training and user orientation where needed.
Future Hurdles for PDAs and Wireless?
Joint Vision 2020 describes a global information grid that would feed information to and from a fully networked warfighter based on PDAs and wireless networks, but the vision of free-flowing access to information anywhere and at any time is not without its hurdles. Some major problems that need to be addressed before this can become a complete reality include:
Security. Military access through PDAs and wireless technologies, will have to be addressed so that secure access to intranets and sensitive information can be maintained. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and other security technologies are being deployed and investigated within the Department of Defense and could be customized for use within a PDA environment. The Office of Naval Research is currently funding several research projects under the Critical Infrastructure Protection and High Confidence, Adaptable Software (CIP/SW) Research Program, which includes specific topics dealing with wireless network security.
Privacy. All new cellular telephones will support Automatic Location Identification (ALI) by the end of 2002, according to FCC regulations. These regulations are part of the Enhanced 911 service that will improve the response time of rescue workers by automatically providing detailed location information (http://www.fcc.gov/911/enhanced). Though this only applies currently to cellular telephones, this would logically apply to future merged devices that include voice phone support. Potential privacy concerns exist when a person could be tracked at any time of the day by using the location information feature of the telephone.
Standards. Standards for wireless networking, network roaming, local file transfer, and expansion slots are needed to facilitate cross-device sharing and reduce maintenance costs. For example, IEEE currently has a working group (specifically IEEE 802.16) to investigate broadband (cable-speed) wireless access standards. You can go to http://standards.ieee.org/wireless/ for more information.
Conclusion
The vision of a fully networked warfighter, including the home support units, logically drives the U.S. Navy into investigating and deploying PDAs. To assist with this movement, libraries need to deploy information resources to be used within a handheld and wireless infrastructure. There are many advantages to this technology, but many critical changes need to be completed before their full usefulness will be realized. In addition, there are critical areas of research and standardization that need to be resolved before the technology can be safely deployed on an enterprise-wide scale.
No one knows the future...ten years ago, libraries were isolated islands of technology, with many still relying upon printed card catalogs, struggling with CD-ROM resources, and primarily delivering print-based information to users. Now, most libraries have Web-accessible online catalogs and the vast majority of information access is performed using digital resources. As we move closer to having all information available online, combined via an always-on wireless infrastructure, new ways of finding and using information will surely be created.
Lynda Pierce exemplifies this potential in the June 2000 issue of "information IMPACTS magazine" by comparing the creation of the highway system during Eisenhower's presidency with the creation of digital highways based on PDAs and wireless networks. Just as no one foresaw that a highway system would create interstate commerce and provide other advantages, no one can predict what a world of fast, portable, ubiquitous handheld devices will do to information access and information use in the future.
I would like to thank Ms. Ronnie Schulman and Mr. Peter Armenti, fellow students at the Catholic University of America School of Library and Information Science, as well as our professor Ms. Ingrid Hsieh-Yee for their assistance with this article.
R. James King is the Specialist in Library Information Technology, directing all Digital Library efforts for the Naval Research Laboratory Ruth H. Hooker Research Library.