Chapter 1: What Is the Mobile Web?

Today, most of us are using our cell phones primarily to download ringtones and check our e-mail, but there is an abundance of truly amazing services we can access through the mobile Web right now. The mobile Web, simply put, is the World Wide Web accessed through a mobile device, ranging from a cellular phone to an iPod Touch. It includes the entirety of the Web and is not limited to Web sites that are specifically designed for mobile viewing. The mobile Web is the Internet for the small screen and therefore delivers many of the same rewards as its desktop counterpart—constant connectivity, location-awareness, limitless access and interactive capabilities. Mobile Web users are faced with finding made-for-mobile content by either guessing the addresses of favorite destinations' mobile versions or using a search engine, which may or may not present the mobile site at the top of the results list. The mobile Web is still evolving, and this is an exciting time of early development, but some hurdles still need to be overcome. This paper examines the constitution of various components of the mobile web and explores how they can and have been utilized by librarians.