InfoGallery: informative art services for physical library spaces

Much focus in digital libraries research has been devoted to new online services rather than services for the visitors in the physical library. This paper describes InfoGallery, which is a Web-based infrastructure for enriching the physical library space with informative art "exhibitions" of digital library material and other relevant information, such as RSS news streams, event announcements etc. InfoGallery presents information in an aesthetically attractive manner on a variety of surfaces in the library, including cylindrical displays and floors. The infrastructure consists of a server structure, an editor application and a variety of display clients. The paper discusses the design of the infrastructure and its utilization of RSS, podcasts and manually edited news. Applications in the library domain are described and the experiences are discussed