© 2007 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. USE OF A MOBILE ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE

Abstract. A mobile architectural guide assists architectural tourists in selecting, navigating to and recognizing architectural sights. The guide supports such tasks by means of domain knowledge, design documentation and contextual information organized into navigation modules, architectural information systems and learning modules. 1. Visiting Architecture Modern information and communication technologies support access to all kinds of information from virtually any place in several continents. Access to online information is no longer restricted to conventional computing devices: mobile telephones and other lightweight wireless devices are becoming increasingly popular for information processing on the road or in the field. Despite the obvious limitations of screen size, processing and storage capacity, such devices are generally capable of supporting interaction with the majority of documents used in professional settings. The current focus in mobile information processing seems firmly fixed on ‘social ’ applications but there is a discernible increase in more conventional professional applications (Kaga et al. 2006; Matsumoto et al. 2001; Tedrumpun and Nakapan 2004; Wang and Shih 2002) –even if it may have come rather late, as we can judge from the recent stagnation in the development of palmtop hardware and software. Somewhere in between social and professional applications we encounter informative and educational applications which make use of professional information for non-professional purposes and use technologies marketed for personal entertainment and communication. Digital architectural guides are an example of such applications. Even though copyright issues form obstacles of increasing magnitude and complexity, there has been substantial even though unsystematic digitization of information on architecturally important buildings. Online resources concentrate mostly on visual documentation (scanned drawings, photographs, three-dimensional models), while only a few have bee