Library Navigator

Share your Work

mbraendle

in Share your Work • 2 years ago

The library navigator is an interactive map application that displays floor plans of libraries (but other rooms and their premises may be visualized as well). It helps library users to find documents easily. For this it highlights library facilities, topics and locations, shows the quickest path to a facility, and provides an overview on the library services.

http://www.infochembio.ethz.ch/en/librarynavigator.html

The maps show the rooms of the Chemistry Biology Pharmacy Information of ETH Zürich, a small-to-middle-size science library (about 100-150 K physical documents and links to about 900K electronic documents (journal issues, e-books, webpages)).

Functions are described on

http://www.infochembio.ethz.ch/en/librarynavigator_help.html

More about the project and download of the (documented) source code on

http://www.infochembio.ethz.ch/en/librarynavigator_about.html

All maps and objects are stored as SVG (scalable vector graphics). A minimal set of SVG objects (i.e. only the shelves, which are simple rectangles) is provided with the download so that the code can be tried out.

The library navigator consists of several components:

1. The library visualization applet

made with Processing and Java. The path finding algorithms use functions of the Java library JGraphT, an open source library for objects and algorithms of graph theory.

2. Web page(s) (HTML/CSS/JavaScript, requires Yahoo YUI library)

Contains the visualization applet and provides logic for navigation of the building floors as well as for queries for topics, services, locations, or statistical library data.

3. A database for library space information (not provided with source code)

The database must provide an XML API for passing all library data to the applet. The current implementation by the Chemistry Biology Pharmacy Information Center uses FileMaker and the XML/XSLT API.

The maps of the Chemistry Biology Pharmacy Information Center use about 8000-10000 database records to describe all space objects, topics, services, and paths.

Instead of a database, XML files only can be used also. A set of XML files is provided with the source code.

We recommended to use a database, since this facilitates querying and filtering of data. Whether this is implemented as MySQL/PHP or something else, depends completely on the implementer.

4. A database for storing navigation queries (optional, not provided with source code)

5. Library catalog links for calling the library navigator

The web page (see 2.) may be called stand-alone, or it may be called from a library catalog by using an URL to pass a

localization parameter.

The library navigator software is a followup project of the GIS visualisations of library data created by the Chemistry Biology Pharmacy Information Center of ETH Zürich, see http://www.infochembio.ethz.ch/en/holdings.html. Work on adding these visualisations to the next version of the the library navigator software is currently done.

Replies(2)

calsign

Re: Library Navigator

2 years ago

Nice...
Is it just me, or is the scrollwheel input backwards?
Just thought it was worth mentioning...

mbraendle

Re: Library Navigator

2 years ago

Is there a convention?

I see that Google Maps is zooming in the other direction, but they have a vertical slider.

In our case one can not only use mousewheel up and down, but also left and right (with a mouseball mouse or an Apple Magic mouse). And then it is logical for our horizontal slider.

The code fragment for the wheel handler (in module library_space_events.pde) just considers the wheel step value, but not if the wheel or ball was moved vertically or horizontally:

// mouse wheel event handler, handles zoom
class MouseWheelInput implements MouseWheelListener {
void mouseWheelMoved(MouseWheelEvent e) {
int step=e.getWheelRotation();
framecount_prev = frameCount;
if (zoom >= 50 && zoom <= 400) {
if (step > 0) {
cursor(mouse_zoomplus,0,0);
}
if (step < 0) {
cursor(mouse_zoomminus,0,0);
}
float zoom_change2 = zoom_change * float(step);
zoom = zoom + zoom_change2;
if (zoom < 50) {
float diff = 50 - zoom;
zoom_change2 = zoom_change2 + diff;
zoom = 50;
}
if (zoom > 400) {
float diff = zoom - 400;
zoom_change2 = zoom_change2 - diff;
zoom = 400;
}
fscale = initial_scale * zoom / 100.0;
x_offset = x_offset - applet_width * zoom_change2 / 200;
y_offset = y_offset - applet_height * zoom_change2 / 200;
}
}
}

Top Reply