Can't You Just PictureIt?
RSSJen Maney
Librarians love books, online or off. When I first saw PictureIt Rare Book Reader (free from the University of Michigan Libraries), dozens of ways to use it flew though my head. I could see myself using this tool with photos, newsletters, children's and teen artwork, library histories, pamphlets, and on and on. The format is so appealing—with the ability to zoom in using the plus tool, the cool little flip of the page when you get near the corner, and the book-like frame—that I had to try it. Goodbye flat-looking PDFs, hello digital pages! The tool is available for use under a Creative Commons License and the University of Michigan Libraries provides both the tool and the source code. I decided to try the tool, because I knew it must be Flash-based, and I figured the source code wouldn't do me any good since I know nothing about Flash. I created a PictureIt book out of the Inside/Out chapbook that we post on our website every year as a plain ol' boring PDF. It's a lot more fun to look at this year as a PictureIt book! Here's how I did it. Don't be daunted by the steps. It's easier than you think. Download the zip file of the tool and unzip it. In the zip file you've downloaded, you'll see "data" and "history" folders. I found that I only needed to change things in the data folder. You can happily ignore the other files and folders. When you create and save files, save them with the same names you see in the data folder because the code that creates the book refers to these somewhere, and who wants to pick through code looking for the file names and change them? Not me! So use the same file names, and it will be easier. Trust me. Inside the data folder, there is a "book" folder. Inside that is a "Volume_1.1" folder, which is where the book pages reside. The pages are JPEG images. You create two copies of each image—one small and one larger—and name them like this: Smaller image #1 = page_0000-1.jpg Larger image #1 = page_0000-2.jpg Smaller image #2 = page_0001-1.jpg Larger image #2 = page_0001-2.jpg Smaller image #3 = page_0002-1.jpg Larger image #3 = page_0002-2.jpg ... and so on. The larger image comes into play when people use the zoom tool to focus more closely on the page. I used 414 x 600 pixels for my smaller images and 828 x 1200 pixels for my larger images. I should have made the larger images even larger, so that I could have gotten more detail when I zoomed in. The original size of the sample larger pages is 3312 x 4800 pixels, so you can safely save up to that size. I used Photoshop to resize and optimize my images, but you can use something simpler like Microsoft Office Picture Manager, which lets you resize images with the "edit" function. You really don't need Photoshop. I used it because: 1) I have it; 2) I had to convert 43 images into two sizes; and 3) I was able to easily automate this monotonous task using Photoshop. I had a 43-page chapbook to work into my book, so I wrote out a list of which PictureIt pages matched up with my chapbook pages so that I wouldn't get confused. Then I had to make my page numbers correspond to the book pages. Inside the "Volume_1.1" folder you will see a "pages_book.txt" file. Open it to find a list of images that will correspond to the pages in your PictureIt book. You'll see this in the text file: page_0000-1.jpg page_0001-1.jpg page_0002-1.jpg page_0003-1.jpg page_0004-1.jpg ... and so on. Since I had 43 pages, I had to add to the list. You only need to list the images that end in "-1.jpg" in this file. page_0000-1.jpg page_0001-1.jpg page_0002-1.jpg . . (all the pages in between) . page_0010-1.jpg page_0011-1.jpg page_0013-1.jpg page_0014-1.jpg . . (all the pages in between) . page_0040-1.jpg page_0041-1.jpg page_0042-1.jpg page_0043-1.jpg Save the .txt file once you have listed all of your pages. Don't change the name of the text file. To make a cover for my book, I used the "splash.jpg" image in the "Volume_1.1" folder, keeping the same dimensions for the image that the splash.jpg file had (380 x 550 pixels). I saved it with the same name. I also changed the "empty.jpg image," which is a blank page at the front and back of your book. This image is 414 x 600 pixels. Once again, I saved it with the same name. Images and pages were all done and in order. All that was left was to change the information in the "config.xml" file in the data folder. Don't be scared by the .xml extension. This file opens up in Notepad or Wordpad, and you can change text and save it without blowing the whole thing up. (I promise!) This file contains data about your book and acknowledges the University of Michigan Libraries. I only had to change two things. Look for these HTML tags and change the text between the tags (bolded here so you can see it easily). title and author of the book <title>Example Config</title> <author>Eric Maslowski</author> Thank you to the developers <caption>Good to acknowledge where content came from.</caption> To get the book up on my website, I pulled all of the contents of the PictureIt folder into a new folder in my web. This includes: data (folder); history (folder); AC_OETags.js (file); main.html (file); main.swf (file); playerProductInstall.swf (file) When you create a link to the book, you link to the "main.html" file, and the book automatically opens and functions beautifully. No coding necessary! A huge thanks to the University of Michigan Libraries for making this tool available. What will you do with PictureIt?
