Mobile Apps for Libraries: Apps and Gear for Ethnographic Field Research

This column offers a broad survey of mobile applications and related gear that can serve for portable note taking and ethnographic field research. Author van Arnhem relates her own personal experience as often as possible. The column points out the importance to many researchers of capturing information in more formats than simply text notes. A range of solutions for researchers and projects of different types are explored, with a focus on the multimodal integration of image, audio, and video with both typed and handwritten text. The author also delves into ethical and legal concerns and gives an overview of software for cloud file storage and syncing from the field.