Action for Libraries
June 2006 Issue, Vol. XXXII, No. 6
The Internet Connection
By Michael Sauers
Respond to Patron's Cell Phone
The next time a patron calls the reference desk from her cell phone, why not offer to send her the answer to her question right to her
phone. As long as she can receive SMS (text messages), you can easily forward the answer to the question — with Google's help.
The most direct way to do this is to access Google's Send To Phone page at toolbar.google.com/send/sms/index.php. All you need to do is fill in the destination number, select the patron's service provider, enter a subject and fill in the text you wish to send. Nineteen different service providers are available, so you should be able to send your message to most all of your patrons.
SMS messages do have a limit of 160 characters, but if you enter a message longer than the limit, Google will split up the message automatically into parts under the limit before sending your message.
If you're a Firefox user, you can add theFirefox Send To Phone extension that will add a cell phone icon to the browser (www.google.com/tools/firefox/sendtopone/.) To use this, just highlight the text you wish to send and click on the icon. The selected text will automatically be placed into the form for you. Then just fill in the number, service provider and subject fields and click Send.
