Was reading recently about catalogues and liked the idea of a button in a catalogue for texting the book details to your phone. This may well be an idea already becoming obsolete with the recent revolutions of the blackberry/iphone folk. However, it remains the case for me, and I guess many others, that standing in front of a catalogue, or an interesting book in a shop, and wanting a way to record the necessary information. In bookshops, I have long had the practice of saving ISBNs as notes in my phone. My phone is a very simple one but it can handle notes. However, in a library, I find the item on the screen and I either memorise the location details (approximately) or I look for a pencil and paper (also difficult as I’ve mostly lost the motor skill of writing long hand – I need a keyboard).
For this intervening period, a catalogue that can text book information sounds like a good plan. I suspect I’ll be upgrading my phone capabilities before too long (I need to start begging work to give me a blackberry – chance: almost zero) but many others will always be in catch up mode.
snail 
Good idea. Although I just take a photo of the screen with my phone. You could even send it to through to Evernote and have it converted to text, thoough maybe you need a smartphone for that.
if the books had QR codes on them you can scan them with some phones and they can decode text. it’s like a barcode reader. could have the whole bibliography details too if they encoded that in the QR code. or weblinks. whatever they like
QR is one possibility and some of the smartphones can now handle the barcodes themselves. A mate with an iphone can scan the barcode and it will go off and do a price comparison, while you wait :-)
I suppose there’s a looming sense as to whether publishers will get round to moving to QR or simply go totally electronic.