Touch Tables for Special Collections Libraries: Curators Creating User Experiences

Abstract

This article describes the implementation of touch table technology for McGill University Library’s special collections. The touch table was used by the Osler Library of the History of Medicine and the Marvin Duchow Music Library to create audiovisual exhibits to accompany traditional exhibition display cases. Each exhibition curator used a different software platform to create his or her touch table experience. This article explores the introduction of what is now a common technology in museums into the library setting and the attendant challenges, such as the need to create attractive and user-friendly experiences with limited resources and programmer time available. In particular, the article explores the library’s choices of software and hardware, providing lessons learned as well as some preliminary recommendations of best practices. It also analyzes the ways in which the touch table has proven to be an excellent addition to the library’s exhibition spaces, including its ability to unite disparate resources from multiple branch libraries, to act as a new point of librarian-faculty collaboration, and to display nontraditional items from library collections, such as recorded musical performances and archival video footage.

Supplementing the Stacks

“…The CEE allows visitors to register attendance, submit questions and comments to the curator, and receive supplemental materials to the exhibition via email. Dysert, Rankin, and Wagner (2018) describe another instance of digital components being incorporated into in-person displays with McGill University Library's use of touch tables in their exhibitions as an example and argue that "the use of technology [facilitates] new encounters with curated materials, creating this sense of cultivation and discovery in public displays" (1). Additionally, they acknowledge the benefits of technology as a means to complement the older materials found in special collections, noting that representing old materials digitally "[adds] a new layer of interaction and interpretation" (2).…”

Keeping up with best practices: Library exhibitions at a university library in a small island developing state

“…Furthermore, on the matter of having dedicated staff assigned to exhibitions, there is added benefit to acquiring librarians with standard training in the care and handling of rare and special collections material. In fact, several journal articles on exhibitions in academic libraries focus on those with special collections (Chen et al, 2015;Dysert et al, 2018;Swanwick et al, 2015;Taylor, 2018) and there is no shortage of literature on the care and handling of special collections materials for displays. Continued consultation of a library's exhibition policy is also critical as matters like the length of time a particular item is to be on display or how many pieces are to be displayed must be addressed.…”

“…Furthermore, the academic library is challenged with creating innovative ways to broaden the impact that exhibitions have on their audiences and creating online versions of displays is one such approach. Libraries have gone beyond the idea of simply uploading an online version of an exhibition to a library's website and now find novel ways to engage their communities using technology (Dysert et al, 2018;Keith et al, 2017).…”