Virtual Shelf Created for The Open Library Project Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Background The Collections Visualization Group Devin Blong Jonathan Breitbart We are 2 nd year Masters students at the UC Berkeley School of Information ( Our focus is on user experience research and design and technologies for learning and collaboration. Our backgrounds are in the humanities and social sciences. Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Background The Open Library ( Background –Visualization – Next Steps The goal of making all published knowledge available online Creation of an enormous wiki, in which each page represents a single book 13 million+ books, 230,000+ full text Book pages feature links to where the book can be found and full text when available, as well as reviews, ratings, and summaries Our goal: help Open Library users interact with the collection in a way that utilizes the strengths of both digital and physical libraries Annual meeting on October (“Using Digital Books”) – Goal of 25 million books and 2 million full text online

Initial Research Findings Library of congress subject headings are very powerful, but rarely utilized by anyone except expert researchers Use of shelved collections for subject exploration – Rather than finding the exact combination of subheadings, users often perform a keyword search or title search for a book they know is in the subject area – Users acquire the call numbers, then search the shelf for surrounding books Serendipity is important in the research process Library patrons also remember books in non-standard ways – Color, size, and location rather than title or author Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Research Design Iteration Task-based analysis Heuristic evaluations User prototype testing Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Prototype Demo

Features Overview The purpose of the virtual shelf is to allow users to browse collections or sets visually Books appear as icons at the bottom of the screen When selected, a book’s Open Library page appears in the Book Details section of the visualization Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Features Appearance Physical dimensions of the virtual book spines are dynamically generated based on metadata for cover size and number of pages for each resource On mouseover of the book spines, tooltips provide detailed information about the books Color of the spines is still under exploration. Some proposals include: Popularity Derivations via cover image Subject Relevance Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Features Interaction Users can select a book’s spine to see that book’s Open Library page Once a user has found a book that is relevant to their interests, they have the option to add personal notes about that book Users can save the book to a Bookbag Bookbags can be saved as personal shelves, given titles, and shared with other users Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Features Types of Shelves The General Shelf – The general shelf allows users to see a book in the context of the collection as a whole – Equivalent to looking at the stacks in a physical library Search Created Shelves – Users can view search results as a shelf, then sort and filter in various ways Personal (User Created) Shelves – Users can save sets of books as custom shelves to share with friends, colleagues, or all Open Library users Subject/Genre Shelves (under exploration) Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Next steps Continue to refine the prototype – Fix book spine titles – Implement shelf sorting functionality – Implement bookbag saving/exporting/sharing – Decide on how to utilize spine color – Prepare demo prototype for October annual meeting Explore other applications – Because the book icons are dynamically generated, the Virtual Shelf can be repurposed for nearly any collection Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Next steps Background –Visualization – Next Steps

Acknowledgements Rebecca Malamud and Aaron Swartz of the Open Library Mari Miller and the UC Berkeley Library staff Eric Kansa, Tapan Parikh, Marti Hearst, Raymond Yee, and other UC Berkeley School of Information Professors Background –Visualization – Next Steps