LIBRARY IN VIRTUAL REALITY

An Innovative Way for Accessing, Disseminating, and Sharing Information

Tereza G. Kirner

Graduate Program in Computer Science, Methodist University of Piracicaba, Brazil -

Andréa T. Matos

Faculdade Cenecista de Brasília,Ceilândia, DF, Brazil

Plácida L. Costa

Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Marília, SP, Brazil

Keywords: Digital libraries, Virtual reality.

Abstract. This paper focuses on Virtual Reality (VR) as a very powerful technology that can be applied to the

libraries, aiming at contributing to the activities of accessing, disseminating, and sharing information. The

paper presents the VR concept and describes some libraries in virtual reality under utilization in different

countries. In the final considerations, it is pointed out the use of virtual reality to develop libraries as

collaborative virtual environments.

1 INTRODUCTION

By searching through the Internet, we have found a

great amount of electronic and digital libraries;

however, we identified that a very reduced number

of these libraries available on the web are based on

virtual reality technology. Furthermore, it was

observed that the libraries based on information

technology count with very few interesting visual

characteristics, in terms of human-computer

interfaces and pedagogical appeals for educational

research. The existing characteristics are usually

limited to hypertext and image resources, many

times with an overload of multimedia presentations

that make the navigation through the application

slow. In addition, most of the libraries do not

provide an adequate interactivity level that the

virtual reality technology can offer to the fulfillment

of typical user needs.

The existing libraries available in the web could

be improved in several aspects, by the introduction

of virtual reality, as well as the three-dimensional,

walkthrough environment of a library in virtual

reality could motivate the user to the investigation

and search for information. Virtual Reality (VR)

technology can make possible the simulation of the

real world (or part of it) and the user should be able

to, through interactive activities, perform

experiments, manipulate, observe and draw

conclusions from their own simulation. Therefore,

some activities that would be almost impossible to

be accomplished daily, could be developed through

a library supported by VR.

The objective of this article consists of the

presentation of virtual reality as a very useful

resource to be applied to the libraries available in the

web, aiming at contributing to the tasks of accessing,

disseminating, and sharing information.

First, the article gives an overview of the VR in

terms of three essential characteristics, that is,

immersion, interaction, and involvement. After that,

it presents some libraries in virtual reality under

utilization in different countries. Finally, the article

gives the final considerations, pointing out the use of

virtual reality technology to develop libraries as

collaborative virtual environments.

127

G. Kirner T., T. Matos A. and L. Costa P. (2006).

LIBRARY IN VIRTUAL REALITY - An Innovative Way for Accessing, Disseminating, and Sharing Information.

In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 127-130

DOI: 10.5220/0002440801270130

 SciTePress

2 VIRTUAL REALITY

The history of libraries shows that they have always

depended on technology. Since the manuscripts for

the use of printed texts, up to the information access

through databases, the use of the CD-ROM, and the

appearance of the digital library, in the end of the

1990’s, and furthermore, to the incorporation of

telecommunication networks, the technology was

always present in libraries (Cunha, 2000).

Nowadays, according to Cunha (2000), we are

approaching a new stage of evolution toward the

Libraries in Virtual Reality (LVR), which can be

considered as part of the libraries of the future.

Virtual Reality has been applied to a wide

number of knowledge areas, as an innovative way to

effectively interact with real environments. It entails

the use of advanced technologies, including

computers and several non conventional peripherals,

to produce a simulated (i.e., virtual) environment

that users perceive as comparable to real world

objects and events. With the aid of specially

designed devices and sensors, users interact with

displayed images, moving and manipulating virtual

objects, and performing other actions in a way that

generates a feeling of actual presence in the

simulated environment. The unique features and

flexibility of VR give an extraordinary potential for

use in work-related applications. It permits users to

experience and interact with a life-like model or

environment, in safety and at convenient times,

while providing a degree of control over the

simulation that is usually not possible in the real-life

situation. The work-related applications that appear

to be most promising are those that employ virtual

reality for visualization and representation, distance

communication and education, hands-on training,

and orientation and navigation.

According to Kirner (2000) and Vince (2004),

VR allows a strong communication between users

and the computer application, concerning the aspects

of immersion, interaction, and involvement. Those

aspects can be described as following.

(a) Immersion. It is associated to the feeling of

the user to be “inside” of the virtual environment

and “deeply engaged in a virtual world as if it were

the real one” (Vince, 2004). In this context, we can

characterize the immersive and the non immersive

virtual environments. In immersive environments,

the images are shown to the user in such a way that

makes the user to believe that he/she is submerged in

this environment. This is achieved by means of

visual, 3-D modeling, sound and activation of

human senses, combined or provided by specific VR

devices (such as head-mounted displays, trackers,

glasses, etc.) and projection rooms or CAVES. In the

other hand, non immersive environments are

characterized by the use of computer monitors,

keyboard, and mouse. The degree of realism of the

scenes and the quality of information available to the

human senses is essential for the accomplishment of

interaction, in VR applications. It is directly related

to the quality of sound, image, perfection of the

objects, and response-time provided by the computer

system (Vince, 2004).

(b) Interaction. It refers to the capacity of the

computational system to detect the user's inputs, and

instantly modify the virtual world and the actions

over this world. Kirner (2001) describes the term

interaction, affirming that "[...] the interaction

process in a virtual environment, immersive or not,

is considered nowadays to be a continuous system

where each action from the user should be answered

with an action from the virtual environment system”.

The interaction modes involve the identification of

gestures, three-dimensional interfaces and multiple

users' participation. Virtual reality joined to the

distributed collaborative visualization can improve

significantly the interaction conditions among users,

accelerating the adjustment and selection of

visualizations and allowing the user's immersion in

the considered environment.

users' motivation to take part of certain activities.

The involvement can be passive, such as to read a

book and watch television, or active, such as to

participate in a game together with other partners.

VR is potentially useful for implementing these two

types of involvement, besides to allow a more

intuitive interaction (Vince, 2004). We can say that

the virtual reality environment needs to captivate the

user's attention in the development of a task, holding

his/her interest. Virtual reality is characterized by

the illusion of participation in a synthetic

environment allowing different types of data

analysis represented in the environment, allowing

the user to manipulate and analyze his/her own

object under study or somebody else’s, through the

collaborative participation in these environment. The

use of collaborative environments in virtual reality

systems will be included in the next section,

focusing on library environments supported by

virtual reality.

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3 LIBRARIES IN VIRTUAL

REALITY

Some experiences are already indicating the

approximation of the libraries to virtual reality.

Among those available at the Internet, we choose

five representative LVR - the Médiathèque De

L´Ircam – France (2001), the VILMA Library -

Spain (Martin, 2000; Munhoz, 2000), the ULBRA

Library – Brazil (Azevedo, 2001), the Digital

Library of Theses and Dissertations - United States

(Neves, 2000; Phanauriou, 2000), and the ARLib –

Austria (ARLib, 2003 Umlauf, 2002), presented as

following.

(a) The Médiathèque De L´Ircam. This library

applies the non immersive VR technology so that the

user can take a virtual tour in the library

environment.

(b) The VILMA Library. This “Virtual Library

with Multi-layer Architecture” is a digital library

focused on computing documents. These documents

are collected from the Internet through several

mobile agents, and once on the library environment,

they are classified and catalogued using information

retrieval techniques. After their inclusion into the

library, these documents are available for access in

several ways, such as: documents browsing, catalog

browsing, and customizing of the views to the user.

graphical consultation to an existing library, using

virtual reality. In this way, the users can access the

virtual world representing the library, walk through

its corridors and consult its works (book and

documents in general) in a virtual environment. This

virtual library allows, for instance, the user to

visualize the cover and browse through the initial

pages of a book. The shelves are identified by

subjects, as it occurs in conventional libraries.

When a book is selected, its 3-D representation

opens up, so that the user can have access to its

contents.

(d) The CAVE-ETD Library. This is an

immersive environment that was developed to

provide access to the Electronic Thesis and

Dissertation (ETD) Library, which includes the full

content of the MS and PhD thesis collection from

colleges of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute at the

University of Virginia. The users wear special

glasses to visualize and explore the library. Besides,

the interactions of the user with the virtual library

are performed with the wand, a 3-D pointing device,

which makes possible the free navigation around the

different rooms and the browsing of the collection.

(e) The ARLib Library. ARLib Library is an

immersive environment, representing the Institute

for Computer Graphics Library at the Technical

University of Vienna, which was developed using

Augmented Reality (AR) technology. AR can be

considered a special type of virtual reality, that

makes possible the user to see the actual world

around him and, in addition, to see some computer-

generated markers or inscriptions included in the

actual world. These markers or inscriptions enable

the link to a search engine and a database containing

all the information related to the object under

consideration. The ARLib application aims to aid

the user in typical tasks that are done in a library,

such as searching for a book and returning a book.

To search for a book, the user utilizes the book

search engine to find the publication he intends to

find on the shelves. This is performed by entering

one or more search criteria using the text input

widgets and then selecting an item of the resulting

set. The publications can be accessed through their

title, author, keywords, year, etc. User input in

general is performed by means of a wrist-worn

augmented tracked touch-pad. To return a book, the

ARLib attempts to detect markers that are attached

to books. If a marked book is spotted, all available

information about the publication is presented on the

wrist panel, and the book’s designated position on

the shelf is highlighted to aid the user in returning

the book to its correct position.

Figure 1 shows a user in the ARLib.

Figure 1: Using the ARLib (ARLib, 2001).

LIBRARY IN VIRTUAL REALITY - An Innovative Way for Accessing, Disseminating, and Sharing Information

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4 CONCLUDING REMARKS

For the development of those library environments

in VR, there are several computing resources that are

already used nowadays by the Computer Science

professionals. First of all, it is necessary to plan,

implement, maintain and evaluate the developed

software according to criteria elaborated by the area

of software engineering (Kirner, 2000). Besides, the

resource of collaborative environment that the VR

technology can enable is related to the concepts and

applications of the areas of distributed systems and

database. Those two areas, although they are not

focused by our present work, are necessary for the

creation of a CVE (Collaborative Virtual

Environment).

The development of VR applications, such as the

LVR, requires the use of modeling software tools

and languages, which can be freeware, such as

VRML, or commercialized, like 3D Studio, Poser,

and World-UP, among others. There is a vast

amount of software for modeling of scenarios and

objects, with characteristics referring to the

treatment of actions, animations, effects, simulation

and manipulation of objects. For the development of

a LVR, it is necessary to use the appropriate

programming language, as, for instance, JAVA,

which can be useful in the creation of structures that

implement the interface between the VRML and the

resources of the environment, as chat, or even in the

development of those resources.

Besides using the VR technology, there are other

aspects of great importance that characterize a LVR,

as, for instance, the user's interactivity with the

environment and with the users amongst themselves

through the communication nets. In order to assure

such interaction, it is important to exist the

possibility of collaboration, since a collaborative

environment can be a fundamental piece of a LVR.

We believe that libraries based on the use of

technology have specific functions for certain

groups of users. As well as a virtual library has a

non physical structure, a LVR should provide a

virtual space for the exchange and spread of

information. The VR technology possesses many

possibilities for the creation of a virtual

environment, which can work as a point of virtual

meeting for the exchange of information. While in

the virtual libraries a space does not exist, in the

LVR the space is represented by the virtual world,

and the participants should be present in a

collaborative environment, where they can be

represented by avatars. The exchange of information

depends on the virtual presence of the users of

information inside of the environment, since the

exchanges are activated by their participation and

interaction. In the virtual libraries there is no specific

place for the collaboration in real-time among their

users, while in a LVR the space is appropriate and

necessary for the participants to interact amongst

themselves and with the objects of the scenery,

simulations, and other contents that a LVR can

contain (Matos, 2003).

Therefore, we can conclude that such library type

goes beyond employing the virtual reality

technology. The resources offered by this

technology can be explored integrally, because it

allows the immersion, enabling more specific studies

on new ways for assessing, disseminating, and

sharing information.

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