These images have begun to appear all around the Library. You may be wondering: What the heck are these? We have all been to the supermarket to buy groceries and watched the scanners add up our totals. The registers are reading the barcodes printed on every item. Those codes carry between 12 and 40 characters of data. Think of the QR code (Quick Response) above as a barcode on steroids, one which can potentially carry upwards of 4,000 characters. This includes a number of different types of data, anything from a simple line of text, a contact for your address book, or a date for your calendar, to a link on YouTube, a PayPal “Buy Now” button, or a link to Face Book. The QR code itself is not a simple line but a two-dimensional “print based hypertext link” (http://www.qrstuff.com/qr_codes.html). To read these codes requires some version of a smart phone, with a camera and QR reading software. One of the best free readers is by i-Nigma (http://www.i-nigma.com/Downloadi-nigmaReader.html) which lists all of its versions as well as the long list of supported devices. Other readers may be available as apps for your phone, just search for “QR reader” in your app marketplace.
Our QR codes in the Library are mostly links to people or departments on Wheelock’s website. A couple are contact details for a person and one or two will bring up a blank email message. As we experiment with QR codes you will begin seeing them for other uses around the Library. Let us know what you think! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at librarytech@wheelock.edu or 617-879-2223.
Jeff Pearson
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