philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

How Libraries can use AR

The mythical maze app (available here) has been downloaded more than 10,000 times to date. Across the United Kingdom children participated in the Reading Agency’s 2014 Summer Reading Challenge, Mythical Maze, by downloading the Mythical Maze app on their mobile devices. Liz McGettigan discusses the app in an article  published on the Charter Institute of Library and Information Professions website by explaining how it uses augmented reality to make posters and legend cards around the library come to life. The article links to The Reading Agency’s promotional video (watch it here). The video discusses how mythical creatures are hidden around the library and how children can look for these mythical creatures with their app. If they find the creatures, they can use the app to unlock mini-games. The app also allows children to scan stickers they receive from reading books, which unlocks rewards and allows children to learn more about the mythical creatures.

Using apps and integrating augmented reality is a fun way to do a summer reading challenge. The Reading Agency reported that 2014 was record-breaking year for their program. They state that participation increased by 3.6% and that 81,908 children joined the library to participate in the program, up 22.7% from the previous year. These statistics show that children are responding positively to augmented reality in their libraries.

See the full post here: http://informatics.mit.edu/blog/guest-post-diana-hellyar-library-use-new-visualization-technologies