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Articles - July - 2005 Issue

"Turning The Pages:" Another Step Forward For Online Books

- by Michael Stillman

Pages from Conrad Caesner's Historiae Animalium, ready to be opened on the NLM site.

Pages from Conrad Caesner's Historiae Animalium, ready to be opened on the NLM site.


By Michael Stillman

The process of placing books online, a move from old-fashioned reality to virtual reality, has taken another step forward with the "Turning The Pages" feature recently offered by the National Library of Medicine. In the past, we have written about the digitization process by Google, Project Gutenberg, and others to place the entire texts of old books online. These projects promise to make the text of millions of books available via the internet to anyone in the world in the not-so-distant future. Perhaps one day the great majority of books will be available this way. On the other hand, the National Medical Library has, at this point, made just three available. Why does this rate a story?

The answer is that what the National Library of Medicine has offered is no mere text, nor scanned book pages either. They have attempted to create the experience of leafing through a book, even if it is all being accomplished on a computer. If scanned pages were the equivalent of a film, what the NLM offers is a 3-D, sensurround, Imax movie. It's as close to real thing as you're going to find on a computer screen today.

The technology goes by the name "Turning The Pages" (TTP). Originally developed for the British Library, the NML became the first U.S. institution to begin using the technology in 2001. It was used to place virtual books on kiosks in their Visitors' Center. The kiosks offered touch screens that allowed visitors to virtually leaf through the pages of their books. From there, the next logical step was to place the books online, allowing anyone anywhere to look through their books, just as visitors to their center could through the kiosks.

What happens when you go to one of the books on the NLM website is you get to turn the pages with a click of your mouse. So, you place the cursor on the book, click the mouse button, and the book opens before your eyes. It does not suddenly appear open as with standard scanned pages, but the book opens, the cover, than the pages, turning before your eyes. Once the page has opened, the image of the page remains frozen for you to read, until you again decide to turn the page.

Naturally there are still a few disadvantages to these virtually real books. Skimming through pages is not possible, nor is it easy to move quickly from one page to another that is not adjacent. However, NML balances this out with some features not offered by real books. There is a built-in magnifying glass to read small print or closely examine illustrations. A "text" button allows you to read a summary of what is described in the pages (especially helpful for books not in a language you understand), or if you prefer, the site will read the descriptions to you. These are "talking books."

There isn't much more to be said about this technology; it's time now to try it for yourself. Click the following link to go to the "Turning The Pages" site, and the click the "Turn The Pages" icon below any of the three books to see. Go to: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/books.htm.

Rare Book Monthly

  • ALDE, Apr. 8: GUEVARA (ANTONIO DE). Histoire de Marc-Aurèle, Empereur Romain, vray miroir et horloge des Princes. Paris, Pierre et Galliot du Pré, frères, 1565. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: HEURES DE LA VIERGE. Horæ in laudem beatissimæ virginis Mariæ ad usum Romanum. Paris, Charles L'Angelier, 1556. €4,000 to €5,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: MONTAIGNE (MICHEL DE). Les Essais. Édition nouvelle, trouvée après le deceds de l'autheur… Paris, Abel L'Angelier, 1595. €6,000 to €8,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: [ROJAS (FERNANDO DE)]. Celestina, tragicomedia di Calisto et Melibea, tradotta de lingua castigliana in italiano idioma… Venise, 1531. €2,000 to €3,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: CAMÕES (LUÍS DE). Os Lusiadas. Lisbonne, Pedro Crasbeeck, 1613. €2,000 to €3,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Bruxelles, Roger Velpius & Huberto Antonio, 1611. €6,000 to €8,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: LA FONTAINE (JEAN DE). Fables choisies, mises en vers. Paris, Denys Thierry et Claude Barbin, 1678-1694. €6,000 to €8,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: CERVANTES (MIGUEL DE). El Ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Madrid, Joaquin Ibarra, 1780. €3,000 to €4,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: DIDEROT (DENIS) ET JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT. Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. Paris, 1751-1765. €15,000 to €20,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. LAMARTINE (Alphonse de). Les Laboureurs. Poème tiré de Jocelyn… Lyon, J. A. Henry, 1883. €8,000 to €10,000.
    ALDE, Apr. 8: [LIVRE TISSÉ]. Livre de prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle. Lyon, [A. Roux], 1886. €5,000 to €6,000.
  • Sotheby’s
    Books, Manuscripts & Objects from Three Important Collections
    Open for Bidding 2-17 April
    Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: [Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun]. Le Roman de la Rose, [Geneva or Lyons, c.1481], first printed edition of the most important medieval French vernacular poem. £200,000 to £300,000.
    Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Castiglione. Il libro del cortegiano. [Venice], April 1528, first edition, in a magnificent binding by Jean Picard for Jean Grolier. £100,000 to £150,000.
    Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Jacobus de Cessolis. Schachzabelbuch, Strasbourg, 1483, von der Lasa copy. £50,000 to £70,000.
    Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: World Championship, 1972. A collection of 84 press photographs of the famed match between Spassky and Fischer. £2,000 to £3,000.
    Sotheby’s, Apr. 2-17: Ben Franklin. Autograph letter signed, to Lord Shelburne, British Prime Minister, during peace negotiations, November 1782. £15,000 to £20,000.

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