iTour: How We Fit Six Floors of Milner Library into the Palm of Your Hand

Illinois State University\u27s Milner Library is breaking new ground with iTour, a tour of the library that uses Apple’s 5th generation iPod. iTour is a blend of video, audio, and user-selected choices that will launch a new age of Information Literacy delivery within higher education. If you have a digital camera, a word processor and a little HTML experience, you can create one too. When the student starts iTour, it will walk them through a full tour of Milner, letting them determine what to explore, and at their own pace. iTour is programmed to be interactive, allowing the student to determine the direction and depth of knowledge on a variety of sources and services at Milner. We chose iPods for iTour because it freed the students from sitting at a computer, watching an online video. Now the students physically move around in Milner, engaging with both the physical building, and the “iLibrarian” with a technology that is know and utilized by thousands of their peers every day. In addition, iTour can be checked out from whenever the library is open, so the tours could be utilized by students that may have other employment or family constraints