The hope was that the smartphone friendly barcodes will help to help locals learn their history.

As the use of QR codes increases among historical buildings and sites, the Boone County library has implemented the barcodes to help to link the community with their local history.

The project is being called the Chronicles of Boone County and works as an online local encyclopedia.

Kaitlin Mullikin, a local history associate, is at the heart of this project, which employs QR codes to provide information to local smartphone users. She explained that the barcodes have already been seen on historical roadside markers all around Boone County, and that they are also on a number of Burlington historic buildings.

When the QR codes are scanned, they link the user directly to the Chronicles mobile website.

There, the smartphone user who has scanned the QR codes will be able to see an overview of the building, event, or person that is related to the location of the barcode, and will provide links to the sources that were used to provide that information.

According to Mullikin, the links that are provided within the descriptions themselves help to demonstrate the connection that exists among the events, places, and people throughout Boone County. She said that she first came up with the concept when she was a Northern Kentucky University public history graduate student.

She explained that she was looking for a capstone project and that one of her co-workers at the library had recently attended a webinar that had provided her with information about location-based digital collections that use geolocation through GPS coordinates. The library had already implemented QR codes for other purposes at that time.

Mullikin explained that it was “the path of least resistance” for providing this information to the public. She stated that “the most interesting part of studying history is reading primary sources – sources from people there at the time or first person accounts.”

She also pointed out that people who are interested in learning more about the information that they have seen, after having viewed the general description that is provided by scanning the QR codes, it is possible for users to look at the sources. Then, they can read more by using the books that were identified on that list.

E-commerce advances may be born in Boston this year

E-commerce and mobile commerce entered the new year with a great deal of momentum, much of which was garnered during the 2012 holidays, when consumers took to their mobile devices to make purchases online and through their smart phones and tablets. A new year means more possibilities for e-commerce, which may see significant advances coming out of Boston, Massachusetts. There are numerous companies based in Boston that are developing very innovative approaches to e-commerce that could have a significant impact on the future of mobile commerce.

Companies see promising results in 2012

Many of the companies showing such extreme interest in e-commerce experienced the full potential of this channel during the 2012 holiday season. Boston-based retailer RueLaLa claims that more than 40% of its sales came from mobile devices connecting to its website. Backed by such promising results, many of these companies are looking to establish a stronger presence in the e-commerce world, and some have taken the route of developing new payment systems and technologies to accomplish this task.

Large organizations are moving to develop better e-commerce services

Large companies in Boston have begun making acquisitions of their smaller counterparts in an effort to promote growth and produce better online selling systems. IBM’s Smarter Commerce, an initiative designed to provide market insight in a variety of industries, is currently developing new software that is expected to transform the way companies sell products online. Technology giant Oracle is also making several acquisitions in Boston, including the company’s purchase of ATG and Endeca. These companies are involved in e-commerce technology.

Companies expected to see better results this year than they did in 2012

E-commerce seems to be growing at a rapid place among Boston retailers, with several companies putting more serious focus on how to engage consumers online. This trend is expected to continue gaining momentum until it reaches a peak during the 2013 holidays. Last year, retailers caught a first, extremely promising glimpse of the prospects of mobile commerce. This year, they are likely to be looking to expand on the results they saw during the 2012 holidays.