Babel VR: Multimodal Virtual Reality Environment for Shelf Browsing and Book Discovery

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the development of a system called Babel VR, part of a work-in-progress research project aimed at obtaining insights into how a multimodal virtual reality environment can enhance shelf browsing and the discovery of books that exist in a physical library. Babel VR provides a virtual browsing experience of library items which display bibliographic attributes such as title, author, topic and location in a library, aided by the use of voice commands. The representation of physical library shelves enables the possibility of having some affordances of physical browsing within a virtual environment, while at the same time providing readers with a browsing experience enhanced by multimodal features such as the use of voice commands for searching and browsing.