Nate Hill explores QR code technology and how it can bridge the gap between online communities and the physical world
By Nate Hill July 15, 2009| Head back to the latest issue of netConnect for more on Hyperlocal Libraries |
My name's Nate, I'm a librarian, and my communities are disconnected. I participate in two kinds of communities: my online community and my physical community. On a daily basis I update Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, and I've probably signed up for a dozen more social web services that I don't use as regularly. As a librarian responsible for a neighborhood branch library, I am also quite active in my real-life community, where I both live and work. Despite all the updates I send to my various social networks from and about my role at the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), an important element of community connection and interaction is still missing. To address this in Greenpoint, a group of librarians and artists have founded the Greenpoint Poetry Sites (GPS) project using QR codes to create a platform for the ultimate site-specific, neighborhood-centric online experiment. QR code primer The QR code is a simple hyperlinking technology that can completely revise the way individuals relate to their physical community—think of it as bridging the gap between meatspace and cyberspace. QR codes, or 2-D barcodes, are barcodes capable of storing a web address, a phone number, or another piece of information (QR stands for “quick response”). A user with a camera phone and some freely available software can scan the image of a code, decode it, and point the phone's web browser at the coded web address (for QR code reader options, go to greenpointpoetry.org/readers.html). This means that if I were to leave an obvious barcode stuck to a park bench on a sticker in QR code form, anyone could walk by there, snap a photo, and be sent to a specific web space that correlates to that particular location. The codes can easily translate short bits of text or numeric information into an image easily scannable by patrons with any one of hundreds of different mobile devices. In England, for example, both the University of Bath and University of Huddersfield are embedding the codes directly into their online catalog. Users scan the QR code image and are instantly given the call number of the item on their mobile device that they take with them into the stacks. While QR codes in the catalog are potentially a great convenience to our users, they have the potential to do more in translating location to URL. The Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio has taken things a step further, placing 2-D barcodes directly in the stacks to promote the new mobile library catalog. Scanning the barcode with a QR code reader will launch the mobile catalog portal in your phone's browser. This is exciting because it allows the library to offer an interesting and clever new technology to its patrons while promoting something libraries have offered since the beginning of time: the catalog. And, yet, neither of these applications takes advantage of the social web. From read-only to read-write Take my own online activity as an example. Every day, I set the Rube Goldberg social media machine in motion when I send out a tweet about eating my breakfast in the park. Before I've finished my coffee, the pic I've posted of a squirrel begging for my egg-and-cheese biscuit bounces from Tumblr to Twitter and FriendFeed, and from there it gets posted to Facebook as a status update. And though I'd broken the cardinal rule of social media (never post about breakfast), my morning moment is instantaneously dispersed across my entire social network of friends, followers, subscribers, readers, and comrades. I'll arrive at my office in the library 20 minutes later to find that another librarian on the other side of Brooklyn thought the squirrel was cute, and a college buddy in another state commented about missing the breakfast biscuits at our old favorite place. Still, while these updates on my friends' lives are nice, none of this connected me in any way to the community that enjoys the park just as I do. What about the commentary of my neighbor, an individual who will pass through that same space in another 30 minutes? What of the observations of the tourist who came to this park as part of a visit to Brooklyn? This is where the true potential of QR codes lies. Take as an example the picture of the begging squirrel I sent to my social networks. Now, imagine if I'd posted it instead to a URL linked from a QR code attached to the park bench I was on. Rather than one limited update from a single person's original experience, the post could contribute to an information feed with a specific and discoverable place at its source. Now an online community can grow each time an individual happens to walk by the park bench, take a picture, and collaborate, much the way that conversation and interaction happen in a real-world community. Now, some might consider my squirrel example to be trivial, revolving as it does around breakfast. But consider the potential. The examples from the library catalog in Bath and the shelves in Columbus are linking to web resources that are read-only: *click*, you take a picture and then your phone redirects you to a static web page offering some kind of information source. That is the first step, but the most exciting application of hard links is the ability to make physical world locations writable spaces on the web. It can be likened to soliciting graffiti, but all of the content of the graffiti is located online and connected via a barcode instead of on the object itself. The public library, as a community hub, is in an ideal position to encourage location-specific conversation. Traditionally, we have encouraged knowledge exchange within the walls of our buildings. Increasingly, we are taking that exchange outside of those confines. Offering discoverable, physical access points to web content is a natural progression. What if a QR code linked to a writable space was put up at the site of a gang murder, so people could create a virtual memorial? What if a code was placed outside your city councilor's office so you could comment on city services on your way to work? Greenpoint social In Greenpoint, we've branded barcoded stickers to be recognizable as part of the GPS project and placed them in six spots around our neighborhood, including on the Greenpoint Branch of BPL, and in front of a popular neighborhood restaurant and bar. Anyone walking by can snap a picture and add their thoughts about that location at that time. Taking a picture of the barcode will launch a mobile Wordpress theme, and the participant can immediately enter text based on whatever he or she may be reacting to at that moment. When library patrons and Greenpoint residents contribute, they'll be writing to a mirror of a specific location in the real world, sharing with other people who have made similar connections to that place. Many libraries already host blogs soliciting input from their communities. But users are becoming more and more mobile with their online social activity, so why not take the library's blogs to them, out where their lives are actually happening? With QR code tags linked to a library's online presence, a library can engage its patrons right where they live and work. The GPS project is just one experiment in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, but the impulse to include localized, patron-created content is nearly universal regardless of the composition of a library's community. Wherever patrons have something to say, a library can be there, ready to hear them out and collect their thoughts. There's no perfect solution for engaging with the community, but QR codes just might offer what many libraries need to bridge the divide between a library's online presence and the community it supports.
| Author Information |
| Nate Hill is currently a “free agent,” having (very) recently left his position as Library Information Supervisor at Brooklyn Public Library's Greenpoint Branch to explore California and the public libraries of the West Coast. He blogs for the Public Library Association at plablog.org, tweets as natenatenate, and can be found on Tumblr as natehillnevershutsup |
