Mobile Access to Digital Library Resource Topics

Forum for reporting problems and passing on success stories concerning the use of mobile devices

Resources in your digital library are readily available to handheld devices, such as PalmPilot and the iPAQ Pocket PC. There are two basic access methods: realtime wireless access or batch download from desktop personal computer to your device.

1. Realtime Mobile Access

If you are part of a wireless network, then accessing your digital library is a straightforward process. Simply bookmark your digital library homepage and access resources as you would normally do with your desktop personal computer. (PLEASE NOTE: PDF files are not yet supported in the Palm OS environment.)

We have evaluated the following web browsers for the Palm OS: 

• DPWeb (our preference so far): Online Manual

• EudoraWeb Browser: Difficulty with large pages and with certain web sites, such as E-Medicine

Please report your successes and problems to our forum for others to benefit.

2. Batch Download from Desktop Personal Computer

This approach will allow you to take important web pages with you to use during the day, such as Journal TOCs and specific digital library content. Our experience has been with Avantgo, as reflected in the following instructions.

IMPORTANT: At this time, the maximum page size that Avantgo will download is 32K! Larger web pages will not be able to be downloaded to your handheld device. Also, please note that PDF files are not yet supported in the Palm OS environment.

There are two main ways of saving the pages depending on the amount of content you need

• Downloading a specific web page. (This allows you to do save a specific resource page to which your Digital Library topic page has linked.)

1. First create an Autochannel bookmark.  The instructions for doing this can be found at https://avantgo.com/mydevice/autochannel.html.

2. Once the bookmark is in place, simply navigate to the specific Digital Library topic page's linked resource that you would like to save and click on the "Autochannel" bookmark.

3. This operation will send you to the "Create Channel" page.  Here you will choose the attributes of your page.  The default maximum page size is 100k.  Because this is an individual page, you can set the page size to 20k to save storage space on your handheld device.  Keep the default link depth at "0".

4. Press the "SAVE CHANNEL" button on the lower right hand side of the page.

5. Insert handheld device into its hotsync cradle and press the "HotSync" button on the cradle.

• Downloading a specific web page PLUS all content that is linked to that page. (This allows you to download a topic page AND all of the pages that are linked from this page.)  The Avantgo program will follow all the links on that page and then save them to your handheld device.

1. First create an Autochannel bookmark.  The information for doing this can be found at https://avantgo.com/mydevice/autochannel.html.

2. Once the bookmark is in place, simply navigate to the Digital Library topic that you would like to save and click on the " Autochannel" bookmark.

3. This operation will send you to the "Create Channel" page.  Here you will choose the attributes of your page.  The default maximum page size is 100k.  On a page with a large number of links you may need to increase this to 200k or larger.  Also, you will need to change the link depth from the default "0" to "1". 

4. Press the "SAVE CHANNEL" button on the lower right hand side of the page.

5. Insert handheld device into its hotsync cradle and press the "HotSync" button on the cradle.

As you will see the main difference in the two processes is the amount of space you want the new channel to take up.  Experimenting with maximum channel size and link depth will allow you to tailor the content to fit your needs.

We welcome any and all feedback, including your success and problems in accessing your digital library with this approach. Also, fell free to post to our forum.