Monday, 2 November 2009

Book galaxy

Fed up with the limitations of keyword searching on Star? An imaginative University of Southampton undergraduate computer science student has just won a JISC-funded competition with his 'Book Galaxy' entry.  The JISC website explains the idea behind it:

"Alex Parker’s space-age entry presents library data in three different ‘galaxy’ views where library books are represented as moving stars that change speed and location according to how popular they are within a given course.  They also join together in constellations to show books on connected topic, while orbited by meteors representing the courses of the students using those books...He explains:  'The main reason I entered this competition is that I think that doing a keyword search and presenting lists of books to users is not always the best way to find what you want in a library, especially if you're not sure what you're looking for.  I had an idea that if you linked similar books together in a 'web' and did that for every book in the library interesting patterns would emerge.' "

Find out more and explore the Book Galaxy from the JISC website.

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