Friday, November 04, 2011

NYLA11: QR codes in libraries

Meredith Farkas did a presentation at the New York Library Association Annual Conference on QR codes. As a person who has been incorporating QR codes in student assignments, I was pleased to see someone promoting QR codes to the library community. Here is her presentation:

In order to demonstrate a unique QR code application, Meredith showed this video:



I received a couple of questions via Twitter during the session from people who have not seen QR codes catching on in their community. I believe that QR codes need a champion as well as training. In other words, if you believe that they are useful, then you need to use them and teach others about them.  You should point out where they are appearing in advertisements and marketing material, for example, so that people know that they are all around us. 

Others have done presentation on QR codes including these by Renata Curty:
And this one from Joe Murphy and David Lee King:

I've also written about QR codes, including:
If you need more on QR codes, search Slideshare for additional presentations on the topic.

1 comment:

Susan D'Entremont said...

Coincidentally, on my lunch break at NYLA I read an article in the Christian Science Monitor about QR codes. It stated that while QR codes are very popular in Japan and somewhat so in Europe, they have not yet caught on in the US. About 6% of smartphone users (so about 3% of the total population) in the US use QR codes more than once a month.

So. . . your call to promote QR codes is right on, and librarians shouldn't feel solely responsible if their codes aren't being used. It seems those codes you see everywhere - on the subway, in malls, in magazines, on products - aren't being used by much of anyone quite yet. And if you're a small library with limited resources, maybe be a late adopter on this one!