When looking at any library around the world, there are only a handful of books for a wide audience. There is usually a section for children, young adults, adults, and many more within the library. Finding the books that one enjoys to read can take a while to find, or might not even be there due to either being checked out by some other reader or transferred to another library. Now that there is an emergence of digital libraries that exist where one could find their favorite books online with a few requiring a fee to read certain books. However, the reader now loses that connection of reading a physical copy of the book by flipping through the pages, or wandering through a library to look for their books. Readers also lose connection to other people who they would read books with and would not know what other readers think about a certain book. They could through online comments, but not at areas where they saw that within the book. But what if there was a way to be able to wander through a library, not a real one, but a virtual library. With the emergence of virtual and augmented reality, creating a space where a virtual library can be seen is possible.
Imagine being in a normal room: put on a pair of VR goggles or put a portable device in front of one’s eyes, and instead of a normal room there is a library with shelves of books to the ceiling. One can change the genre of books around in this “virtual library” for which book they would want to read and are capable of “pulling” the book out of the bookshelf and looking through it. This is the beginning of the virtual library, one where readers could explore all of their favorite works, take a book off a shelf, and start reading it just as if they are in a library. According to Borsuk, the Internet Archive has more than twenty scanning areas where they scan books to preserve them in modern times by treating them with the utmost respect (The Book, pg. 218-219). Within the virtual library, the reader would be able to access these books . They would only be able to read a certain amount of the book by either “flipping” the pages or through an e-textbook format before the virtual library would want the reader to “check out” and “return” within a timeframe. If the reader wants to keep the book that they enjoy reading over and over again, then the digital library would help the reader to find the version of their book, either physical or digital, to buy and keep. If the reader wants to explore this virtual library with others, then for VR they could all connect to a shared library or they could hang out together within one room to explore in AR. According to Carrion, the “definition of the book as a ‘sequence of spaces’” (The Book, pg 149), meaning that books are meant to take up space within the area a book is produced. So even within a digital library, a book can still exist due to the fact that a book is the space within an area of space. Other readers can be welcomed into such spaces to comment on their favorite books and allow other readers to know which parts got them interested and why. With the whole room transformed into a digital library where one can change between different age groups or genres to find the perfect books for them to read, the world of reading will keep expanding.
Each author has their own way of telling their stories: some like to allow the reader’s imagination run wild while others would show the reader their world through images, drawings, fictional or historical maps, or any form of visual looking. The virtual library can still allow readers to just use their imagination and would help amplify that. The virtual library would turn the reader’s surroundings into where the reader would feel most comfortable reading in by a menu of option themes. If the reader would enjoy the visuals of the book, then they can keep it and the virtual library would then transform into a world of the books. According to Borsuk about the book, “Because they are unbound, each leaf of the slot-books can be oriented four ways as well as flipped” (The Book, pg 178). Each author has their own way of telling their stories: some like to allow the reader’s imagination run wild while others would show the reader their world through images, drawings, fictional or historical maps, or any form of visual looking. The virtual library can still allow readers to just use their imagination and would help amplify that. The virtual library would turn the reader’s surroundings into where the reader would feel most comfortable reading in by a menu of option themes. If the reader would enjoy the visuals of the book, then they can keep it and the virtual library would then transform into a world of the books. Each author has their own way of telling their stories: some like to allow the reader’s imagination run wild while others would show the reader their world through images, drawings, fictional or historical maps, or any form of visual looking. The virtual library can still allow readers to just use their imagination and would help amplify that. The virtual library would turn the reader’s surroundings into where the reader would feel most comfortable reading in by a menu of option themes. If the reader wants music to play in the background, then the virtual library can do that to allow the reader to be more immersed into the story. If the reader would enjoy the visuals of the book, then they can keep it and the virtual library would then transform into a world of the books. Now the readers can read the book in their own ways with either traditional methods such as flipping the pages or in a digital space where their surroundings are the story and the way it is told is still within their own control. This would allow readers and authors to connect more due to allowing the reader to read the story in whatever way they want to with the author still being able to allow their story to be told in the way they wanted the story to be told.
Borsuk has mentioned the potential of digital devices to help create a place for books within the digital realm though the computers and other electronic devices (The Book, pg. 200). If virtual reality and augmented reality are going to be the primary access to the virtual library, then they will be the primary publishing areas for new versions of texts. Virtual reality and augmented reality would need to learn how to allow readers to “flip” through the pages and transform the room into the digital library. Authors could introduce a first person view of reading the story by putting the reader in one of the characters places and allowing the reader to switch between which character they want to look through their eyes. If the author would like to make their story like a video game for their readers to come to different endings such as some video games have. Virtual reality can allow the reader to get immersed into the stories through a more personal way by allowing the reader to feel like they are inside the story. Some authors might allow the reader to put their input into the story and allow some characters to change that way. Augmented reality can allow the reader to explore the world by just transforming a certain area into the world and allowing the reader to read what that object is within that fictional world and what it can do. An author can make augmented reality a game where the more a reader explores the world, the more the reader can learn about the world and what the story is all about.
Virtual and augmented reality have the potential to allow readers to enter a virtual library where they can either read stories in any format they ever dreamed of reading in. Allowing others to visit the virtual library where one keeps all of their books and what comments they put on it and how different readers interact with the contents of the book. It could be just flipping through a virtual page of a virtual book in any setting the reader would ever dream of being in, or being able to walk within the pages of the world to explore the author’s view of the story. Authors can find new ways of immersing their readers into their world through video game settings or a puzzle format. Physical books will not go away, but virtual books can become something that readers can cling on to and allow them to get more immersed into the world of that story even more than before. The virtual library can expand how books are kept and how they are read in any way and format that the reader would enjoy the most.