Figures showing everyday use of a university library are the unlikely stars of a JISC-funded competition showcasing innovative approaches to presenting library data.
The winning entrant, an undergraduate computer scientist, created an imaginative ‘book galaxy’ showing books as stars in the galaxy of library resources accessed by University of Huddersfield students and staff – scroll down this page to see it.
Note: You can try Book Galaxy at the bottom of this page.
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
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Starry-eyed Alex, a University of Southampton student, admits that he was “amazed” to hear the news of his winning entry. 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.
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Other entries include an application which suggests a subject course based on the books you’ve enjoyed reading, a facility for sharing your reading list with others, and way of finding out which books students on a given course have taken out, as well as how much they’ve saved by using the library rather than buying them.
Source: JISC
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