National project  \  2018 - 2021

Lib2Life - Revitalizing libraries and cultural heritage through advanced technologies

One of the main objectives of Lib2Life is to create a cyber-physical library by creating 3D immersive and interactive reconstructions of libraries and developing tools for socio-collaborative digital annotations of physical books. In the context of the current prevalence of online media and resources as means of communication and knowledge, both the library (physical space dedicated to reading and related activities) and the physical book itself gradually lose their attractiveness. This project has an extremely courageous and at the same time feasible goal: to revitalize libraries and physical books, by adding new dimensions - based on powerful and highly attractive digital technologies: multi-user 3D virtual environments and environments socio-collaborative online. The project will create multi-user interactive 3D virtual environments, through digital reconstruction of the buildings of 4 central university libraries (of which 3 have high heritage value): 3D modeling of buildings, interactive 3D visualization (on monitor, mobile devices or head-mounted-displays) , multi-user interaction, virtual guides, live transmission of virtual physics events and participation of virtual visitors in real events. Also, socio-collaborative digital annotations for physical books will be created through the development of an application for mobile devices that will allow users, while reading a physical book, to add and view socio-collaborative digital annotations. The addition will be extremely easy, by scanning the desired fragment annotated with the mobile device. The socio-collaborative aspect means that users will be able to see all the annotations made by other readers of the same book and will be able to respond to them, in the form of comments. We present these 2 essential components of the project, highlighting the importance, novelty, functions, implementation plan and risks specific to each of them.