by Annie Cain, Harvard Library Innovation Lab
What’s the point?
Why recreate the physical stack? Why not just use a list? There are advantages to display books like books.
Advantages
- If you have multiple branches, you can put all the materials into one shelf.
- More visual, such as using page numbers to create thinner or wider images.
- Add more information – color can represent such as frequency of checkouts.
How to Get Started
- build HTML objects and draw using CSS
- works as jQuery plugin
- Start with book data – wrestle data out of your catalog, extract pieces you want and feed it into Solr, or use API, such as WorldCat
- pump out stack view using JSON
Q&A Comments
- Usability testing gives mixed reviews. Librarians and those used to browsing the library are happy with it, but others don’t seem to care.
- Experimentation with items other than books is to come.
- No plans yet for catalogue integration as not much use case, but working on it.
- Also take a look at Chrome WebGL bookcase.
More information on available on the Harvard Innovative Lab website, and below is a demo.
Learning (Lib)Tech 