Browsing the stacks…1,200 miles away
Posted by Steffen Böddeker
The Judd Foundation just launched a smart online catalogue of the artist Donald Judd’s personal library in Marfa, Texas. Representing the book holdings of an artist who was also an avid collector, writer, and designer of spaces and buildings, the interface is particularly valuable for visually revealing the inventory's idiosyncratic arrangement on the shelves.The foundation's website itself is not new (and it shows), but the section for the Library browse tool is. On the Library page (found under the “Spaces” menu), photos of the shelves are displayed alongside the library’s floor plan; users select a section on the plan to view the corresponding shelf, as if standing in front. Moving the cursor over the photo reveals each shelf’s thematic, and clicking it opens a detailed view. From this detailed, single-shelf view it is possible to click on any book’s spine to open the individual record. I love this visual access to a collection entry. (For those not interested in the visual browse, a text-based search is possible.)
This interface is especially useful for such an exceptionally remote library with restricted access. But despite my enthusiasm for the concept, I hope that the project team hasn’t disbanded yet. So far the Judd Library Browse does an excellent job of satisfying curiosity, and it lands itself well to games of hide-and-seek – as Tyler Green already suggested on MAN. But there will be a limit to both the entertainment and the scholarship of getting to know Judd’s shelving logic from afar.
Missing still is the important next step of being able to pull the books off shelf and learn more about them. The textual material found in the record entries is frequently thin, and the cover images shown there are too small to be of any value. The direct link to WorldCat helps find alternative resources, but don’t send people away when they came to your site for a reason. Bringing those aspects up to speed is a matter of labor. But to take the project to a whole new level, imagine the possibilities of crossbreeding the place-specific browse of the Judd Library with the LACMA Reading Room's curated selections of searchable and downloadable individual books, and the Brooklyn Museum Catalogue's ability to cross-reference and share collection items.Now on to the rest of the site...
