Enhanced library experience soon at DOST

Generation Xers will have to stow their library cards and Millennials will soon go beyond online access as the Department of Science and Technology gears up to give an enhanced experience to library researchers within the year. (Photo: Stewart Butterfield/Flickr)

MANILA—Generation Xers will have to stow their library cards and Millennials will soon go beyond online access as the Department of Science and Technology gears up to give an enhanced experience to library researchers within the year.

This levelling up of library experience will start at the DOST- Science and Technology Information Institute (STII) which holds the largest collection of S&T information materials in the country.

STII shall give a preview of what library users can expect through a special library app which the Institute shall launch on its 30th anniversary celebration on February 27, 2017 at the Manila Hotel.

STII, established in 1987 through EO 128, is the information and marketing arm of the DOST. Particularly, STII is tasked to provide S&T information services which include information reference services through its library.

The app, called the STARLib or the Science and Technology Augmented Reality Library, will “add new creative dimension to the experience of DOST visitors, library users, and even beneficiaries,” said STII Director Richard P. Burgos.

“We will redesign the library user experience by incorporating augmented reality,” Burgos revealed. “The DOST-STII library will be the first library to use augmented reality in the country.”

“We will also include virtual reality and gaming in the experience of a science and technology library without physical books,” he added.

Augmented reality is a technology that adds computer-generated enhancements into a real environment in real time to make the experience more meaningful by interaction. It blends digital components into the real world to enhance each other.

Virtual reality, meanwhile, is an artificial, computer-generated simulation or recreation of a real life environment or situation. The technology makes users feel like they are experiencing the simulated reality firsthand through vision and audio stimulation. This is usually experienced in video and computer games, 3D movies, and even in training for real life environments such as flight simulators for pilots.

Virtual reality presents a digital recreation of a real life setting, while augmented reality mixes virtual elements as an added layer to the real world.

One example of this virtual reality experience, according to Alan C. Taule, chief of STII’s Information Resources and Acquisition Division which handles the STII Library, is the popping-out of a description when a smart phone installed with the STARLib app is used to shoot a certain part of the library.

“The app may also run a 2D or 3D animated object with an audio,” he said.

Taule also said that the enhanced experience through virtual reality will start with STII materials and selected locations at STII and will be expanded to include the whole of DOST Compound in Bicutan, Taguig City.