Augmented Browsing of Books in Historic Libraries

This project addresses a significant problem in historic houses: the fact that books, which are among their most important collections, are not accessible to visitors. This is a wide-spread problem in historic university and cathedral libraries and many National Trust properties. A good example from the National Trust is Wimpole Hall with a fully catalogued book collection which however is inaccessible to visitors of the property. This project aims to make such library collections available to the public through Augmented Reality technology, which will allow browsing the books on-site, through a mobile device, without removing the books from the shelves. This will mean that while eliminating any risks of damage, the visitors' experience in the historic property extends to library collections. The project brings together experts on augmented reality and experts on the history of the book to produce a pilot system for a small number of books in Wimpole Hall. It involves testing the technology for identifying individual volumes by hovering a mobile phone camera in front of a shelf. It also involves the development of relevant content for this group of books which will be overlaid in front of the live camera feed. We will develop this system and then test it on-site at Wimpole Hall with participants from the public visiting the house.

Key partners: Ligatus, University of the Arts London; Museotechniki; National Trust.

Key stakeholders: Institute of English Studies, University of London; University of Uppsala Library; Bodleian Library, Oxford University; John Rylands Library, University of Manchester; Salisbury Cathedral; Christchurch College, Oxford.

One of the aims of the project is to engage with stakeholders in order to raise awareness of the project output. We have identified stakeholders for every aspect of the project and the level of engagement that would be of interest to them. In general we have divided the stakeholders into:

- Public / visitors of historic houses, whose experience will be enhanced and their knowledge extended by having access to rich material of the books in historic libraries,
- Professionals / content providers, such as cataloguers and conservators who will be able to share their records and knowledge with the public thus increasing the impact of their work,
- Heritage managers, such as National Trust property and collection managers who will become aware of a new technology that can enhance visitor experience of their collections.

The project focus will be the deployment of the system in a National Trust property during the Easter holidays to maximise public impact. A number of meetings with stakeholders will also take place to demonstrate the functionality of the system. We will invest resources in these stakeholder meetings in order to form new partnerships which will allow us to follow up this pilot with a project of an extensive scope.