This is my first attempt at putting digital information out into the physical library.
Many students go straight to the bookshelves when they want information. Completely bypassing the computers with millions of relevant articles and books that we librarians have cunningly placed conveniently obstructing their way into the library.
By putting a touchscreen (Asus EEE Top) where the books are I hope that they might discover all that is available in digital format as well. The screen shows an article on the subject that is on this shelf, the Falklands war of 1982.
I have set up a netvibes page with preconfigured searches in RSS and some useful pages on the subject. By touching the screen the students can access articles and webpages directly.
There is a printer at the end of the bookshelf so they can print out anything interesting they find.
Needless to say, this is all very experimental and beta. I must solve a lot of small issues before school starts in august. Security, navigation and automatic reset are some that I have discovered just today. I have not solved the issue on integrating my library OPAC into the netvibes page, but on the other hand, when you are at the correct section, who needs the OPAC to see what books are in? But I am really happy with how this worked out so far.
Filed under: Library 2.0, Users , experiments
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