Beyond Reality: Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality in the Library (2019)

摘要

This slim volume is dense with examples of how augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality are being used in libraries, and the differences between them. To save space, all three will be referred to here as virtual reality. In nine chapters, fourteen authors explain why virtual reality tools are popular with library patrons, making them valuable to libraries. In a discussion of why libraries should embrace virtual reality technologies, R. Bruce Jensen from Kutztown University in Pennsylvania harks back to S. R. Ranganathan's fifth law, "the library is a growing organism" (p. 67). Just as libraries have embraced a long list of other new technologies in their growth process, it is a logical next step for them to embrace these as well. As he points out, "[C]learly what magnetizes the library for many visitors is something other than its books, whose circulation perennially declines" (p. 58).