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Davis Renovation Planning Team

RBC IC Website Project

What it is : I, Mukul Seth (Co-op 2006), am researching the IC websites of other universities to get a better understanding of things to include and how to format the pages. Below are the resuts from the conducted research.

Future: The work on the actual pages will start in January end, and I am hoping to get a working, but draft, website within a few weeks. The site will then be in the review/change stage. My target for a somewhat desirable site is sometime in March.

Link to IC Planning Docs : http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/staff/infocommons/

Update(Feb 28): Currently Anne and I are gathering information from various UW sources (mainly UW Library site) to include on the Information Commons website. The main topic of interest is "Services at the Library".

Update(April 06): This page has not been updated as often as it should have been. We are making good progress on the Information Commons pages, and here's a list of what we have. (You would need to login with UWLib account to view these pages)

Davis Centre - RBC Information Commons -

We're still working on an Online Tour, which will include a 360° virtual tour, some pictures, etc.

Update(April 07): I have figured out the procedure for creating an online tour, and we will most likely be taking the photos on Monday, April 10, 2006. I will be using my own camera because I'm quite familiar with it and it captures high-quality images (4.1 megapixels). What we would need is a tripod and a time when the Library is relatively empty. I am also going to create a "How to print" page for the IC website, which would involve some screencaptures and photography to create a step-by-step visual tutorial.

Update(April 13): The virtual tour was on hold for the past week since Anne was away. Since we're running low on time we will have to complete this early next week and post it on the website. What we still have to do is complete the cgi script for the feedback form, and a printing tutorial. At the ISR meeting next Friday we will unveil the website, and get some feedback from the staff, and make a few minor changes based on that the following week. Which would conclude this project as well as my term.

Update(April 19): Today I took photos of the Davis Centre Library's main floor for a 360° virtual tour, imported them into Ulead COOL 360 Trial and created the panorama. You can view it here, it is also in the DROPBOX (S:\!ALL LIBRARY\Mukul Seth) if you prefer that. I also took photos in the RBC Information Commons and from the main entrance for a 180° (not a complete 360) VR tour. Even though Ulead handles 360° tours fine, it seems to have trouble with these, as it assumes the tour goes all the way around. View the RBC IC VR tour, and Davis Entrance tour (also in Dropbox). These will give you a good idea of what I am hoping to achieve, and I will continue my search for another software that would allow me to also add hotspots (rollover info, and links to other tours from within the VR-tour).

Note: You need the quicktime plug-in to view these VR tours.

Update(April 20): I tested a couple of other free or trial softwares to create VR tours using the images I took yesterday and one of them, PixMaker Pro by PixAround, seemed promising because it has the ability to include hotspots but unfortunately does not allow saving or exporting the file as a limitation on the trialware. Most of these softwares are very easy to use, the tricky part is taking the photos that could be used to create a VR tour.

I also continued work on the IC website pages themselves; fixing up the Hours page, adding a few links, changing the layout of the site to comply with the gold-standard guidelines.

Update(April 28): The RBC Information Commons site is just about complete. Anne mentioned that there would be a need to do some User testing before the site is actually made available to the public.

What needs to be done now?

- Mukul Seth (ISR Co-op 2006)

Anne Fullerton, Project Chair

October 3, 2008