by: Frank Swain
Libraries may be cathedrals of knowledge, but their custodians have the distinctly earthly task of keeping all those books in order.
Now Bo Brinkman, a computer scientist at Miami University has developed an augmented reality (AR) app which he hopes can facilitate and speed up the job of finding misplaced books and returning them to their rightful place. The app, called ShelvAR, scans a dozen book spines at once and detects errant titles. Viewing the shelf through a tablet PC, the user sees incorrectly filed books highlighted, and on-screen arrows point to their correct place on the shelf.
Eventually the software, written by undergraduate research assistant Matt Hodges, should be available as a downloadable app for any library volunteer to use.
Currently the ShelvAR system requires machine-readable stickers to be placed on books, which isn't ideal when collections can easily stretch to hundreds of thousands of titles. The success of ShelvAR will depend on whether librarians consider the cost of labelling all their titles to be offset by the time and money saved in crawling through miles of shelf in the hunt for misplaced books.
The work will be presented at the Association of College & Research Libraries conference later this month.
from: Newscientist
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