Page Turners (access systems to digitized books)
In light of the recent CIC announcement of a shared repository, I thought it’d be a good time to look at some of the current systems that provide access to digitized books.
Museum of Fine Arts Boston – Hopper Sketchbook
There are a few pageturners that actually animate the action of turning a page. I think they are lovely but definitely only good for special items or exhibits.
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Link to example item (click “Hopper’s Sketchbook”)
Princeton University Library Digital Collections
This is definitely one of the most attractive pageturners. I like the thumbnail view, image zooming (though I think the image area could be a bit bigger), and lovely collection browse page.
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Link to example item
The Future of the Book – The Iraq Study Group Report
This one’s not quite a “pageturner” because the text was likely born digital so they have the luxury of starting with great text and complete metadata. I think it’s worth mentioning because I like the annotation functionality.
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Link to example item
Penn State Digital Library Collections
I pulled this one out because it has more functionality than the average pageturner. It allows you to save favorites, compare 2 pages, order saved to present in a “slideshow” etc.
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Link to example item
University of Michigan – MBooks
And I couldn’t possibly leave out MBooks (disclaimer=I work on this project). The Michigan Digitization Project is currently based on the books digitized through the Google partnership but will eventually include items scanned by UM.
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About the project | Link to example item
My full collection of PageTurner interface examples
Here is a feed from my delicious for all the pageturners (or pageturner-like systems) that I know about.
Do you know of any others? Please let me know.
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