How the virtual exhibit happened

Published on 13 December 2015

The responsibility of Stiftelsen Arkivet in the Books Discovered Once Again project is to organize one of the two disciplinary closing seminars, and to explore the genre of virtual exhibit in order to communicate the project and field of knowledge to a broader audience.

The following success criteria for the Virtual Exhibit where collaboratively defined at the Books Discovered Once Again design workshop in May 2015:

1. Novel in regards to the format “virtual exhibit”.
2. Should primarily trigger interest (70%), secondly (30%) share knowledge.
3. Should trigger interest among the general public primarily, professionals secondly (librarians, historians, museologists).
4. Should trigger interest about the context/phenomena “confiscation” of books during and after 2nd World War primarily and about the ongoing project as research in progress secondly. The ongoing project as a cataloguing project may be included only if media rich and able to trigger interest (we may simply direct readers to the project website to cover this aspect).
5. Information may be not conclusive and invite for reflection, even participation (make people look at their own books with signs of provenance or else direct specially interested to the researchers connected to the project).
6. Technical solution should be robust, but not on the expenses of exploring Virtual Exhibit as genre - last for 3 years max. After life support and development needs additional funding.
7. Should aim for wide spread outreach through “viral” communication (emphasize ways of communicating suitable for sharing on social media).
8. Should emphasize Check /Norwegian comparisons –similarities/dissimilarities e.g. Virtual exhibit should be well curated, limited in size, media rich and make use of display rather than demand extensive reading.

Most of these criteria’s are met, whereas others have been cultivated throughout the process. It has become clear that the realistic audience for this content is more “interested adults” and professionals rather than a broad definition of the general public including e.g. school classes. As the Books Discovered Again project is history in the making, it is not until the final stage of the design process that we have got a grip on the actual content to communicate and the collection – which again has limited the explorative displays and e.g. visualization of the data gone viral that we had hoped for. The challenge of making a website that works across no less than three languages, have given “easy to translate”- media types such as photos and texts priority, above animations and videos.

The interface and content is currently in its final design phase, and we are pleased with an original, simple to use and very much visual virtual exhibit with the following main “chapters”:

1. Books discovered once again? Introduction to the topic, aiming to trigger interest
2. Background. Framing the project in its historical context of World War 2 and the Post War Era, aiming to situate the exhibit and the project in a larger context that might seem relevant for an audience of librarians.
3. Timeline. Chronological overview of milestones related to the project and collection, aiming to see the similarities and dissimilarities between Norwegian and Czech context in particular.
4. Books bearing witness. Samples from the collection stretching across ww2/post war era, and European and Czech context.
5. Provenance. Extract of the 12000 and growing collection of stamps, aiming to give a hint of the myriad of books and stories the collection holds.
6. Process. Introduction to the various phases of archiving the 9000 and growing books in the Books Discovered Once Again project, aiming to trigger interest for the ongoing process.
7. About the project. Short introduction to the partners in the projects, and ways to reach them.

The interface main design rests on the metaphor of effortlessly wandering around a physical exhibit – one that has a designed order, but still allows the visitor to explore freely. We do this by the use of spatial, scrollable navigation through inviting image links, rather than traditional verbal menu bars. This main explorative way of navigating the content is supplemented with a more verbally based type of navigation for those that wants to brows the site more instrumental through menu titles.

Instead of overwhelming the user by displaying all info at all times, content is opened and hidden by the user herself – also triggering interaction with the interface rather than only reading. The effortless opening and closing of content allows for different levels of interest - from top level texts and texts for further reading – in turn allowing the regular user not to be overwhelmed while the particularly interested one will be able to brows further on this particular topic.

As online content now increasingly is browsed on touchable interfaces (phone/tablet), we have had to develop a solution that works across these three platforms. Both in order to make the best use of development time and not confront the user with multiple ways of navigating the site across platforms, we have tried to develop solutions that simply works across platforms. For desktop, however, we have added an extra features that orient the user and make the timeline more interactive – something the limited space on a phone simply does not have the space for.

The Virtual Exhibit coexists not only with the project website, but also with the dynamic Facebook page (in Norwegian) and upcoming articles on Wikipedia, aiming to make our process transparent and open up for dialogue and knowledge sharing in already established and social environments. By this we hope to combine the editorial (virtual exhibit) with the collective (Facebook, Wikipedia) – this project in many ways being history making in progress.