Rudaí 23 #thing14: Reality, but better

The first time I came across the term 'Augmented Reality' in relation to libraries was in the 2014 Academic & Special Libraries Conference. A team from DCU library made a presentation about their own experiences of using AR to make digital content available to students. They programmed posters in the library with AR features, finding the podcast tours made available through this method to be the most successful element of the campaign. They saw AR as a step up from using QR codes because AR is more visually striking and you can layer multiple buttons and icons on to your images. I remember being impressed while marveling at the effort that must have gone in to the project but to be honest I haven't thought about AR again in terms of its use in libraries until now.

To get a better feel of how the whole thing works I downloaded the Anatomy 4D App and used it to view the target images on the Daqri Anatomy 4D website. I was really impressed with the result, the human figure that was generated by the app seemed to step out of the screen. The various systems in the human body could be viewed either singly or in layers on top of each other and created an effect that could never have been achieved on a printed page.

I really liked the way the Public Libraries 2020 campaign used Layar with their printed brochure to make videos available of people across the world whose lives have been transformed by their use of libraries. The interactive AR features combined with the physical brochure makes for a powerful user experience.

In the academic library I work in, we produced a printed library guide over the summer. We found that restrictions imposed by the marketing template we were working with meant that some of the content we wanted to include had to be omitted. A version of the printed guide produced with Augmented Reality features using Layar would be a brilliant way to promote the services in the library without this kind of limit. Maps and videos to orient students in the library as well as audio files for self-guided tours could be made available to users who had downloaded the Layar App. It would also be a great way to provide digital access to restricted materials in the library such as some of the valuable or fragile books in our Special Collections room. Using an image in the brochure showing the door to the Special Collections room for example, users could get virtual tours of the vault or access links to digital images of some of the material stored in the archive.

For a project like this it would be essential to carefully plan the timeline for the design, production and marketing of the brochure. It would be heartbreaking to put a huge effort into producing this incredible resource if nobody was aware of it. I think it would work best as a project to be completed over a summer with a plan to introduce the resource to students during inductions held in orientation week. For continuing students social media, posters in the library and the support of academic staff would be key to spreading awareness of the resource.