Surface Computing Coming to your Library?

A student walks into your media center, heads over to the reference desk and places his palm on the surface to access his network pass. The system, recognizing the student, then displays an assignment from his teacher, along with the pathfinder you created for the project. Another student lays her handheld on the desk and seeing her assignment appear, reaches out and drags it onto her device. Suddenly an announcement on the far edge of the desk catches her attention. The student touches the flyer, bringing it to the top of the pile. When she spreads her hand, the document magically expands so she can take a closer look.

Sound like science fiction? Think again. This is just a glimpse of what is possible with surface computing. Developed by Microsoft, the technology is basically a computer that is controlled via a large, touch-sensitive display. Some Las Vegas casinos, hotels, and even CSI: Miami are already showcasing the intuitive graphical interface, which enables users to easily manipulate documents. The powerful system uses multi-touch technology similar to that found in the Apple iPhone to recognize and respond to an assortment of gestures that goes well beyond a simple point and click. Pinch the corners of a document then pull your fingers apart to zoom in. When a wireless-enabled camera is placed on a surface-computing device, the computer can recognize it and automatically download any stored pictures.

As more surface-computing devices start to show up in the world, I cannot help but envision a time when this technology will be accessible in schools and libraries. How might we use it? Libraries strike me as places with a great deal of horizontal and vertical spaces. Replacing work tables and reference desks with surface-computing technology is a pretty obvious move; but what about all those stacks?

One of the major drawbacks of digital stacks and electronic search methods is the loss of serendipity. Library users who browse the shelves looking for one book may stumble across another more valuable resource that they hadn’t found in the electronic catalog. While improvements to cataloging and searching can help address this, surface computing may soon offer a way to more closely replicate the experience of browsing the stacks. A large, vertical display could present a digital bookshelf that users could manipulate using the multi-touch interface. Reach out and grab with your hand, pulling to the left to reveal the next stack of shelves or pinch a book and pull back to remove the digital copy from the shelf and open it for display. Selected books could be stored for use at a table computer, added to a portable ebook reader, or even tagged for physical retrieval.

The beauty of this system is that the shelf is always just right. The book you are looking for is never on a shelf that is too high (or low) for you, everything is dust free and neatly arranged, and all of the books are in order. Whatever order you desire. Chronological? By reading level? Or perhaps you’d like the shelf arranged to display fiction and nonfiction grouped together by the type of animal covered. Since the books are being shelved on a virtual shelf, they can exist in many places at the same time. This idea is nothing new; the excitement comes from the innovative ways that surface computing could allow users to search and browse through collections. The iPhone and iPod Touch already use multi-touch technology and cover flow to let us flick our way through music albums. Flipping through digital shelves as we now flip through pages seems like a very natural and instinctive way to interact with a digitized collection.

As information moves into a digital realm, it can become less personal and more distant. Without physical interaction, information on computers can become very abstract. Surface computing changes this; it makes working with digital information much more personal and physical.

For more information about surface technology, visit microsoft.com/surface.