This is an extension of Google Map Car, consisting of a Segway that stops by the library on the Google Car Route and does a tour of the book shelves -- the way they look right now, and sends that up to the web so people can browse their public library shelves the way they look right now. This wouldn't be accurate enough to let you know what is actually present at the library at the moment, but, serendipity is the name of the game in browsing. I use audible, the library of congress NLS service and the internet in general to find books, and I do most of my searches by keyword, or by those, "if you like" services, and I can never find what I want like I can in the stacks. It's not just the realwolrdness of it either, the visuality and the ease of gaze shifting to the next book, or the organizational skill of librarians, ok maybe it is a little of all of these. But data bases and keyword search do definitely NOT cut it.

What is needed is a virtual browse where the vagaries of the real world library shelf are translated into the virtual world in the form of a google maps reader for libraries. A cart the auto navigates library shelves translating the organizational changes, the missing books, the stains etc to the online world for browsing.

Maybe you could combine world cat, libravox, google books, and google maps, so have the infinite availability of the online world combined with the localness of the real world.
-- JesusHChrist, Mar 25 2014

If this is not implemented at once I will start crying.
-- pocmloc, Mar 25 2014


[+]
-- xandram, Mar 27 2014



random, halfbakery