History at Hand: Combining Special Collections and Mobile Technology to Engage Students and Faculty...

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The Red, White, and Black (RWB) project was conceived as a human-guided walking-tour about African-American history at NC State University. The current generation of mobile devices has enabled us to publish this interactive guide on the web, so that anyone with a smart phone can explore this important aspect of university history. This talk outlines the creation of the RWB mobile application, which integrates existing digital collections and infrastructure to provide access to events, images, and audio that highlight the lives and experiences of African-Americans at NC State. This project is one example of the ways NCSU Libraries is creating opportunities for situated discovery and learning. We will explore some of the challenges and possibilities of repurposing special collections materials to provide new avenues for learning, discuss the technologies and infrastructure that make this possible, and highlight future directions for exposing library resources using mobile devices.

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Handheld Librarian Conference, July 2011

Genya O’Gara & Cory LownSPECIAL COLLECTIONS RESEARCH CENTERDIGITAL LIBRARY INITIATIVES

History at HandCombining Special Collections and Mobile Technology to Engage Students and Faculty with African-American History

BACKGROUND

Familiar Scenes

BACKGROUND

Mobile Website

BACKGROUND

Augmented reality has strong potential to provide both powerful contextual, in situ learning experiences and serendipitous exploration and discovery of the connected nature of information in the real world.

New Media Consortium Horizon 2007 Report

In Situ Learning

BACKGROUND

Augmented Reality Spectrum

Paul Milgram’s Reality-Virtuality Continuum

BACKGROUND

Connect students to university history – in their spaces

Engage users with the people, events, and environment that shaped campus

Surface archival materials in new ways

BACKGROUND

Instead of this…

WHY

Show them this…

WHY

While listening to this…

BACKGROUND

When they’re standing here…

Initial events

BACKGROUND

BACKGROUND

Walking Tour

BACKGROUND

Opportunity

BACKGROUND

Opportunity

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

RED, WHITE & BLACKTOUR

EDITING CONTENT

EDITING CONTENT

EDITING CONTENT

EDITING CONTENT

TECHNOLOGIES

• Ruby on Rails with MySQL

• jQuery Mobile

The Mobile Web App

TECHNOLOGIES

•Touch-optimized interface at low cost

• Simplified cross-platform/browser support

•Familiar HTML/JavaScript development environment

jQuery Mobile (Beta 1)

TECHNOLOGIES

• Solr Index of content and metadata

• Djatoka image server

The Digital CollectionsInfrastructure

FUTURE

Special CollectionsStudentsAlumniClassesOrientationRecruitingAfrican American Cultural Center

Uses

REFLECTIONS

PartnershipsExternal

History Faculty

African American Cultural Center

Students

Internal

Programming & Outreach

Special Collections Research Center

Digital Library Initiatives

REFLECTIONS

Stories are wondrous things. And they are dangerous.

--Thomas King

REFLECTIONS

CHALLENGES

In-Browser Audio

• Should be easy

• It’s still tricky

• http://diveintohtml5.org

CHALLENGES

JQuery Mobile is Beta (was Alpha)

CHALLENGES

Quality Assurance

• Audio must agree with text (names, dates).

• Audio recording quality can vary

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Plans

• Add content to Red, White, and Black

• Use back-end application as framework for other projects

• Other library apps (Library tours? Staff-facing applications?)

The End

Questions?

Cory LownDigital Library Initiatives

(919) 513-2309 cory_lown@ncsu.edu

Genya O’GaraSpecial Collections Research Center

(919) 513-2605 genya_ogara@ncsu.edu

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