Open Stacks is a new online tool for libraries. We're trying to bring the best attributes of physical libraries online, while addressing the cataloging and housing issues they face. Open Stacks grew out of Stack View, a library browsing project generously supported by EdLab, Teachers College, Columbia University. More to come.
Google Street View, but for exploring the Gottesman Stacks:
Description:
Stack View takes Google Street View (where you can go down nearly every urban street for a look, virtually) but gives you a library stack view through your browser. Instead of typing in an address, you enter your topic of interest or call number after which a pan-able and zoom-able image of the related library stack (large bookcase) is displayed.
What you see inside the browser window is a continuous image, meaning, it is thousands of photos stitched together to create one, mega-image. This way you can click and drag the image any which way, scanning the books as fluidly and efficiently as in person.
Reasoning:
Stack View is designed to help introduce you to books and authors you may not be familiar with, information which then may be queried in Google.
“You don't know what you don't know.”
Stack View supplements Google searches. It's for the pre-query stage when you're gathering the search terms themselves. What makes libraries superior in facilitating discovery, and what this project is trying to harness, is both:
1.) the brain power that's gone into classifying each and every book
2.) the information you can infer when you see the size and shape of the artifacts themselves
Technologically, I hope Stack View is innovative in its functional use of digital panorama photography to reveal the thinking behind the neighborly placement of books.
These mega-panoramas, frequently called gigapixel panoramas or images, can be found in growing on-line collections of landscape and event photography (used to great effect to document the Inauguration).
Still, the shooting and display of images at this scale seems in its infancy. It is primarily oriented towards looking up to the sky and out into the distance. Stack View is about looking very closely, but very broadly to hopefully uncover a practical application of this photographic technique.
Real-world images of the spines may be the crux of the idea, that's where I think most of the glanceable browsing data is encoded. This is what I mean:
* Height (nice illustrations?)
* Thickness (page count?)
* Graphics, fonts, color scheme (what's the mood?)
* Publisher's logo or mark (reputable?)
* Shiny (recent acquisition?), worn (popular? old?)