Turning the Pages Online

You’ll need a flash player to view these, but if you’ve ever needed an excuse to download the plugin, here it is. According to the Turning the Pages Online website:

Using touchscreen technology and animation software, the digitized images of rare and beautiful historic books in the biomedical sciences are offered at kiosks at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Visitors may ‘touch and turn’ these pages in a highly realistic way. They can zoom in on the pages for more detail, read or listen to explanations of the text, and (in some cases) access additional information on the books in the form of curators’ notes.

Now we offer Turning The Pages for the enjoyment of home users with an Internet connection. This Web version has been created via Macromedia Flash MX.

Initially only available in kiosks located in the National Library of Medicine’s Visitors Center and the History of Medicine Division, the Turing The Pages (TTP) technology is now available online. TTP Online is only available, however, for six titles so far. The project has been in development since 2001.

If you’ve only got a few seconds, it’s worth your time to turn the pages on Robert Hooke’s Micrographia. You can do more than turn from page 1 to 2 with this title. You’re able to fold out the oversize pages for a full view. Awesome.

Additional Reading:

• http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp.php
• see body hyperlinks for other sites of interest