RSS feedsIts re-united old school friends, jail birds and families spread across the world, but now the internet is re-uniting two works of Leonardo da Vinci's that will provide scholars, engineers, artists, scientists and historians with an insight into the great thinkers mind. In launching Turning the Pages 2.0 in association with Microsoft, the British Library has brought together the Codex Arundle and the Codex Leicester as online works of art, literature and theory.
Turning the Pages has certainly been one of the highlight developments from the British Library (BL) recently and the organisation has garnered a great deal of positive responses from the development. But as Clive Vizard, BL head of creative services said, Turning the Pages was developed as a kiosk application. It was then developed, using Shockwave, for use on the internet. Turning the Pages 2.0 as the new application has been dubbed is focussed on being a web application from the beginning.
Under chief executive Lynne Brindley's guidance the British Library has sailed a cleaver course between serving the public with the information it requires and a commercial plan to generate revenue or create beneficial relationships. Turning the Pages 2.0 is a good example of this cleaver strategy. Two of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks are now visible to internet users. That is as long as you are using Vista, the latest operating system from software giants Microsoft. The Codex Arundel is one the BL's treasures, whilst the Codex Leicester belongs to Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. Both the Arundel and Leicester are re-united now, as an online experience, with the Codex Leicester only available via Vista in a neat bit of marketing led philanthropy by Gates .
The Codex publications offer the most significant insight in to the scientific studies da Vinci made, including his observations of the moon. They consist of 7,000 pages of his famed backward written notes and drawings. No other thinker in human history is so important to such a wide group of people, including engineers, historians, scientists and artists. Codex Arundle was composed between 1508 and 1510 in da Vinci's native Tuscany. Gates' Codex Leicester was written over a much longer period between 1478 and 1517. This is probably the first time these two titles have been brought together since da Vinci was alive
Turning the Pages has undergone a re-fit as an application. As soon as users enter the new site you are involved in a Microsoft Vista experience. Turning the Pages opens up with a typically Vista view; the BL titles cascade backwards from the centre of the screen. To enter into the mind of da Vinci click on a book cover, it moves to the front of the cascade, with the previous titles neatly moving to the back of the cascade. A dialog box above the cover reveals the name of the title and in the case of the Codex Leicester the fact that it is Gates's. Within the dialog box is a View Book button, one click and you are there staring down at a historic item of knowledge and literature in the most realistic virtual experience possible. Below the title is a set of Turning the Pages functions lined across the screen in a way that has shades of Apple's OS X operating system to it.
Regular users of Turning the Pages will notice there are some new toys in the box. There are now tools for physically rotating the title and for making notes on your findings. There are also essays which are useful and nicely feature the ability to increase the size of the text. Users can also move the title about on the desktop, which will be especially useful for when users are viewing more than one text at a time, another new enhancement to Turning the Pages.
Being able to rotate the text by 360 degrees may at first seem to be a bit of fun, but of no real use, until you get inside the da Vinci work. This man was a seminal engineer and being able to look at his diagrams at a variety of angles increases your ability to understand how the devices he was proposing could work.
Turing a page using this application is simply incredible and realistic. There is a wonderful flex and shadow affect, so much so that your mind's ear adds the slip sound of paper turning.
The M character key creates a mirror image of the text so that users can flip da Vinci's reverse written text. Interestingly, you can navigate through the titles without using the turning the pages action, in the tools menu below the text there is a pair of traditional arrowed next and previous buttons, but we found this slower than turning the pages as each page took longer to load, or is that you are distracted by the wonder of the pages turning?
Turning the Pages 2.0 has adopted Web 2.0 collaboration techniques. Users can make their own notes about the titles and choose to share them with the Turning the Pages community or store them for private use. In order to make notes users register, a process that is instantaneous and can be done all within the dialog box that Vista provides, as soon as your user name and email address are entered you are onboard and able to make notes and collaborate. Your notes can be drag and dropped about the desktop and will reappear when you click on the Notes button again.
Viewing two text at a time is also new. In the case of the da Vinci this is undoubtedly useful. From the Settings dialog box users tick a check box to allow multiple titles and then open another book from the Menu on the far left. Users can then compare titles and swiftly swap from one to the other.
Turning the Pages 2.0 is an obvious and well executed development of the application. BL and Microsoft have retained the simplicity of the original application that will ensure that users, whether academic, corporate or amateur will get the most from being able to view two rare titles online.
In brief
Turning the Pages 2.0 puts Codex into a wider Vista
http://www.bl.uk/ttp2/ttp2.html
All
del.icio.us
Digg this
reddit!
