The convergence of web-enabled smartphones, the applications designed for smartphone interfaces, and cloud computing is rapidly changing how people interact with each other and with their environments. The commercial sector has taken the lead in creating mobile websites that leverage the capacities of smartphones, and the academic community has begun to follow suit. Given this relatively recent adoption of mobile technology by the academic community, the handful of studies completed examine how people use academic mobile websites or identify what information/services they want to access via the mobile web and tend to focus on one or two institutions rather than a cross-section of mobile websites across multiple institutions. Cross-sectional studies identify the types of services commonly offered while allowing for comparisons between what is offered and what users want or need to access using the mobile web. This article reports a study that examines the mobile websites of large research universities and their libraries in the United States and Canada. The services available on different university and library mobile websites are compared and contrasted with the literature identifying what mobile web users desire. This analysis across multiple mobile websites provides universities and their libraries with an initial benchmark for comparisons with other institutions. (Contains 8 figures, 2 tables and 46 endnotes.)