LITA Forum Sunday: Scratching the Surface

The last concurrent session at LITA Form 2009 will be the first one I've written about so far (but more will come, to be sure). Sunday morning Will Kurt from the University of Nevada in Reno talked about his new library (lots of cool technology there) and how they're actively looking toward the future. It's not just the cloud we need to think about, he said. The future will also bring more integration of computers into our physical environment–ubiquitous computing. We spend all our time going to computers to do our work, but what if computers could come to us? "How can we integrate computing power into our environment?" Kurt asked. His library recently bought the Microsoft Surface, a table–an honest-to-God table–that has a big multi-touch computer screen right inside. Because it's a table, you can put a cup of coffee on it, spread out some books on it, whatever. "People have even changed babies on them," said Kurt. So rather than going to a computer to do work, the computer is part of an environment where people are already working. Students' reactions were mixed. Kurt heard comments ranging from "this thing is sweet" to "don't get me wrong, it's pretty sick, but I don't want my tuition to rise." Successful technologies need to be perceived as valuable–not just novel. Though the surface wasn't built for an educational environment, Kurt had to build some useful applications for it. The first thing he did was to build a copy of Conway's Game of Life, which was greatly enhanced with the ability to input commands at multiple touch points. "The Game of Life was neat, but I didn't expect it to change the way people worked," Kurt remarked. So next he created some applications to enhance users' experience with the anatomical models that the library circulates. Working with the university's anatomy program, Kurt developed an application that added high resolution images to the Surface to correspond with the library's models. (See Will's video below, and even more here.)"The students were already putting their lab notes and models on the table," Kurt said. So the Surface adds to the experience. In the near future, Kurt plans to add images from the library's media collection to the Surface. In the first week of the semester, Kurt saw 70 hours of continuous use on the Surface. "It's really an amazing thing to see," he said.