SO MANY REALITIES

Augmented reality as a library resource

This paper was presented at the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) Premier Conference, 2015: It’s a Digital World

Librarians should perhaps be alarmed that in the literature concerning AR so far, the field of library and information science has not been a prominent part of the conversation. This is concerning for many reasons, but perhaps one of the biggest is that without the holistic approach that libraries take towards resources, AR as a medium will be defined by the discipline-specific contexts in which it currently appears; which right now means that it will be perceived through understandings belonging to the domains of IT, advertising, psychology and philosophy (Zak, 2014). There is little room for access and equity when a medium is understood to be pigeonholed in this way.

Outside the umbrella of the library institution, the patron will not exist as a type of user. Instead, as Zak (2014) suggests, discipline specific research will designate the AR user as “a subject or wearer”. These treatments of the information seeker are not holistic and do not allow for cross discipline or non-discipline specific explorations of the medium. At this point in time, as the interest in AR increases exponentially, the voice of the library patron is missing (Zak, 2014), and for school librarians this translates as the voice of students and teachers…..   read the rest of this paper (will download as a PDF)
 

References

Zak, E. (2014). Do You Believe in Magic? Exploring the Conceptualization of Augmented Reality and its Implications for the User in the Field of Library and Information Science. Information Technology and Libraries, 33(4), 23-50.

A quick and easy example of augmented reality

Below is a short video I made, explaining how to access the AR content in Guinness Book of World Records (2012, 2013 and 2014). If you have never experienced AR before, this is a good place to start!