3D (VRML) Interface to IRCAM's Multimedia Library

[elist-web4lib at ircam.fr]

Due to some articles of the list not being forwarded here, I became
aware only yesterday of the responses to my initial announcement, which
was rather brief.

Let me make some comments.  Technical, first:  not all plugins work on
all platforms for VRML.  We suggested Cosmo's (we tried it with IE and
Netscape, on Macs, PCs and SGI, and they worked), there are other ones
which work too. Still, this is a technology in its infancy, as compared
to many older ones, and as it happened with browsers when they first
appeared, then with such technologies as Javascript and others, they
didn't always work at first on most platforms.  Similarly, some very
useful CDRoms are available only for Macs or only for PCs, should we
then dismiss them?  American videos use the NTSC format, not available
here, should we not try to have VCRs with those standards so as to view
them in our libraries?

So yes, I am sorry, this will probably work for now only for some
platforms with some software, will not work on others. Is this still a
reason to dismiss the whole experiment, or else an encouragement to
have those technologies be made more widely available?

Besides, this is not the only interface to our catalog nor a
replacement to existing ones, it is an additional one, for those who
can use it.  We primarily provide access via forms, classification
scheme (call numbers) as well as 2D floor plans.  We tend to think
there is not a unique way that patrons should be forced to use so as to
access the collections. Locally, they can avoid computers altogether
and browse the real shelves, if they so want.

One reason why we created this interface was to provide people away
from the library with a similar ability to "browse" the shelves, since
looking at books by proximity is also a way of finding interesting
material, much as one reads an article in a newspaper and then sees an
interesting article next column (one of the Princeton libraries had,
several years ago, an online interface to the scanned card catalog,
which was _very_ interesting, contents-wise)..

As Linda Wood Hyman writes, interfaces evolve. Sure, telnet OPACs are
fine, but should we stick only to them? Web forms are fine, but should
we not try to provide other, more visual, additional interfaces for
people who do NOT like so much to search in databases by keywords?

Now to the meat.  We are going to use this technology to present the
online digitized material we have through 3D models of contemporary
music (we are a music library).  The model, this time, will not be a
real, physical space (the library as it is) but a "virtual"
construction (by musicologists) of selected domains of contemporary
music, so as to allow for an easier approach of this domain for people
who can't always deal just with abstract concepts.  This particular
technology will allow for direct links with the online catalog as well
as with the online digitized documents (the latter, for copyright
reasons, are available only on site).

We are also going to integrate this with other readly available
technologies, such as RealNetworks' RealAudio and SMIL, through which
we also built integrated online presentations of score-following (music
listening with display of the score on the screen with the pages or
parts thereof appearing in sync with the music).

Yes, all this material is already available through more traditional
means. But this type of interface is meant to be used as an educational
tool, to provide visual means of grouping, clustering, "data" of
various types, with multidimensional presentation, using ready-made
technology which seems in line with the Web.  An online CDROM if
you like.  This is then the gist of this project.

Michael Fingerhut
Director, Multimedia Library
IRCAM - Centre Georges-Pompidou
http://mediatheque.ircam.fr/