Jim W. was kind enough to send me a link to Visual Net for Libraries, which immediately piqued my curiousity and got me to order their demo CD.

Here's how they explain their product: "Antarcti.ca's Visual Net for Libraries addresses these challenges by creating large-scale data maps combining a superior navigation system with information-rich visuals. Library resources are organized into neighborhoods of information based on standard classification schemes such as LC or DDC, with visual metaphors used to convey holding attributes such as the name, author, size, age, holding type, and availability."

Here's how I explain it: pretty maps of information resources laid out in a visual representation. Look at the example Solutions and you'll see what I mean.

I tried to view the demo, but apparently I don't have Quicktime installed (even though I thought I did), so I'll try to run it at work tomorrow. How would I use this? I'd love to give it a whirl with the Virtual Illinois Catalog (VIC). After we go to the new version of VIC later this year, we're going to re-design the entry points so that you can figure out where you're searching geographically since we can't break out individual libraries from their Library Systems. It would also be interesting to test these types of visual maps for focused topical searches within VIC (say, resources for researching September 11) or better yet, thesaurus categories in Find-It! Illinois and the Illinois Government Information service (IGI).

In addition, I've been dreaming about an Illinois version of Cooler by the Lake for a couple of years now, and it would be neat to test this out in that resource as well (if we can ever get it off the ground).

Fellow VIC Development Team members... what do you think?