ARLibrary - The Augmented Library
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ARLibrary is a Studierstube application that aims to help selecting
and locating publications from a library of arbitrary size. The main
points of use for ARLibrary are:
- Search for a specific book or magazine via an intuitive search
interface and have its position on the library shelves augmented,
as well as additional information about the publication displayed.
- 'Search at first sight' that displays book information and
its position on the library shelves as soon as it is spotted by
the user, which is especially useful for returning publications
to the library.
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Videos
Download the ARLibrary video that demonstrates how the Augmented Library
works (video length 2:30 min):
Technical Info & Setup
To use ARLibrary with a real-life library, quite some preparation work
has to be done. A converter software has been written to make that task
easier and much quicker. The ARLibConverter needs some definitions files
in order to generate an Open Inventor - file (IV) containing the library-specific
data.
- A database of all the publications the library consists of
is required. The library file has to be a tab-separated ASCII
text file containing ISBN#, year of publication, shelf assignment
code, author, title and keywords that describe the contents. (If
no keywords are given, the title is used as keywords.)
- The shelf definition file that states where the various bookshelves
are located and what size and color they are. For this purpose,
a local coordinate system must be assumed that has to be
minded when applying the optical markers too.
- The Stations file that defines the number of markers used in
the ARlibrary and their position and orientation in the local
coordinate system.
- (optional) Stationkit file that defines which books have optical
markers applied to them in order to allow them to be tracked with
the 'Search at first sight' option.
Markers applied to library, plus example showing the relative coordinate
system. |
The ARLib Converter application |
After successfully generating the ARLib IV file and sticking the markers
to their designated places in the library, the application is ready for
action.
Using ARLibrary
Searching for a book is a piece of cake with ARLib's interface. There
are 5 searchmodes for conventional searching which can be chosen by the
user. The available search criteria are:
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search by author(s) |
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search by title |
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search by single keyword: only one of the entered keywords has to
occur in a book's keywords list |
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search by keywords: all the keywords have to occur in a book's keywords
list |
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search by year of publication: specify a year or a range of years |
Selecting one of the search results highlights the desired publication
as well as its shelf and displays all associated information.
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The 'Search at first sight' mode is activated by selecting the 'Use
Tracking' searchmode. Whenever a book with a marker attached to it
is spotted, its position on the shelf is highlighted and all associated
information is displayed. Great for returning books you're not sure
about where they should be located. |
Entering the search criteria can be either done by using a virtual keyboard
or graffiti input pad (as utilized by PDAs) on the PIP. The input type
can be switched at any time with the buttons
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change to keyboard input |
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change to grafitti input |
The Test
To test ARLibrary, we chose the Institute for Computergraphics' Library
at the Technical University of Vienna. The book database we received consisted
of roughly 650 publications, which is about half of the total books in
the library. In all, we created 60 optical markers, of which 52 were applied
to the shelves and 8 to books. Since surveying the exact position of each
and every publication separately is not particulary sensible, the ARLib
Converter assumes that all the books appear sequentially in a shelf and
thus derives their position based on an adjustable avergae book width.
Although this does not yield pixel-perfect results, it still is a useful
heuristic if the books actually are placed in some distinct order on the
shelves.
ARLib in use at the Technical University of Vienna / Institute of Computergraphics'
library.
ARLib written by Former British Agents (Eike J. Umlauf &
Harald Piringer)
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