I should ask this here—do any of y’all Gentle Readers know of a college or university that has a mobile app, for which a person can enter a campus location (Schmendrick Hall, Room 203d) and be shown a map of campus with the building highlighted, and the layout of the building with the room highlighted? Or one could follow a link (f’r’ex) from the course or events schedule to such a map with the location highlighted?
I ask because I have never seen or heard of such an app, and (1) it seems like a tremendously useful sort of thing to have, both for students and staff; and (b) it seems like an eminently doable sort of thing. And a company that created that sort of thing could presumably sell the framework of it to any campus to be adapted to their own campus map and room numbering system.
Our on-line catalogue will link from any book’s entry to a map highlighting its (approximate) location in the library, so however we’re doing that, the same sort of thing should work for the buildings and rooms on the campus, shouldn’t it? And I am told that there are apps for convention centers and office buildings that will highlight the location of individual rooms or desks or vendor booths or whatever. And even if the highlighting was just to the correct wing of the building, that would be helpful. So I’m curious if places are doing it, and I just haven’t heard about it, or if there’s some really good reason why it would be expensive and inaccurate (or I suppose why the security issues would outweigh the usefulness).
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.