Library
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This page is about the planned Library activity, which will be separate from the default view of the Browser. For more about the current set of content bundles shipped with the XO, including ways to contribute new collections to it, see library-core.
Library activity
The Library activity will be an activity for browsing books and media in Sugar. This should provide an intuitive way to search and browse through different kinds of text and media, including granular reference works, classical texts, image galleries, audio books, and videos. It should display rich information about highly collaborative materials, with ongoing updates, version #s, and dozens of authors.
The activity should make it easy to search for and request new materials for the library from outside sources (international digital libraries, regional or national repositories, the local mesh). It should provide a way to publish new material for others to access. And its infrastructure should allow users to change its layout and what kinds of data it displays.
The initial Library activity is rolled into the browser -- the browser is planned to have a small icon that takes you back to your library from wherever you are, and browsing to leaf nodes of the library will take you away from library navigation elements. In the future these two activities may be separated.
Purpose and Goals
An intuitive interface for finding media
The Library should provide a layer of abstraction on top of the available reading, editing, and searching activities. It should offer a single place to look for information and media, though there may be separate text-readers, video-viewers, audio-players, and editors for each of these materials.
Through the default interfaces, we can suggest some of the useful metadata that can be filtered up to the highest levels of indexing and browsing.
Initial targets
The simplest initial targets are a library of image-light books, in text or crossmark; a subset of these available as audiobooks; 5000 encyclopedia entries; 1000 dictionary terms, with words in 10 languages; a library of images, each with short metadata strings and sources; and a set of short videos.
Repositories
for notes on an international library catalog for childrens materials, see Library catalog
FEDORA (the repository backend, not the Linux distribution; see the 2003 trademark dispute for a cute story) is a good modular and scalable system for providing access to large collections of materials.
- Fedora appeals to me because it is a pure web service. OLPC could develop a very intuitive front-end for kids without compromising the back-end reliability and power. Here is an install guide I put together for a very basic install of fedora. I installed fedora on top of Ubuntu 7.04 Berrybw