SMS reference in Australia

Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks like one Australian library is the earliest of the early adopters of SMS (text messaging) for reference services. The library at the Curtin University of Technology has been offering a SMS-based reference service at least since the summer of 2004, maybe a bit earlier. The library has posted a few news items that offer some details on how the service is being used:

• "Library & Information Service Priority Strategic Initiatives"
  
• "Student wins $50 asking about Library’s opening hours"
  
• "Congratulations to our 4 ‘grin and bear it’ winners!"

Given that Altarama, the company that offers the only software I've heard of designed to connect SMS to library reference services, is Australian, it's not a big surprise that an Austrialian library is the first to adopt the technology.

Two librarians from the Curtin University of Technology made a presentation about this new service ("Txting Librarians @ Curtin") in February 2005 at the Information Online conference in Sydney. You can view their paper (a PDF) and their slide presentation (PowerPoint) from the conference web site.

For more discussion of SMS in libraries, check out Geoff's post in blogdriverswaltz. Also, I now see that the two librarians from Curtin who did a presentation mention it in a comment on Michael Stephen's post about my earlier post on SMS (how's that for a self-referential tangle!)