Monday, October 31, 2005

Making Visible the Invisible at Seattle Public Library

I don't know how I missed this...a most interesting art installation in that piece of art otherwise known as the Seattle Public Library. It's called Making Visible the Invisible and is by artist/engineer George Legrady. The piece consists of six large LED panels that hang behind one of the main desks at SPL. The screens display visualizations of data generated in real time, based on all checked-out items, using several slices of data, including the Dewey Decimal Classification.
Pictures of the screens here, here (this post sent me to the others I link to) and here. An article from the online version of Seattle Post-Intelligencer is here.

Fascinating. I wonder if the library staff are learning things about use of the collection as they see the flow of content, rather than having that data disappear into the black hole of the OPAC.

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