LibraryLens: An Interactive Tool for Exploring and Arranging Digital Bookshelves

Abstract

Existing digital book management platforms often fail to capture the rich spatial and visual cues inherent to physical bookshelves, hindering users' ability to fully engage with their collections. We present LibraryLens, a novel visualization tool that addresses these shortcomings by enabling users to create, explore, and interact with immersive, two-dimensional representations of their personal libraries. The tool also caters to the growing trend of social sharing within online book communities, allowing users to create visually appealing representations of their libraries that can be easily shared on social platforms. Despite limitations inherent to the metadata being rendered, formative evaluations suggest that LibraryLens has the potential to lower the barrier to entry for users seeking to optimize their book organization without the constraints of physical space or manual labor, ultimately fostering deeper engagement with their personal libraries.