Tuesday 20 November 2012

Next generation digital discovery

A few years ago we were asked by the British Library to imagine how research would work when everything was digital. No need to come to the reading rooms any more.

We worked for maybe two years building prototypes, working with curators, academics and researchers and doing some serious analysis in to work patterns, use of tools and interface expectations.

One output from that was the Growing Knowledge exhibition held in 2010-11 at the BL where some findings were presented and questions asked.

But we were convinced that there was a need for a fully-fledged piece of software for the next generation of researchers. It had to:
- work anywhere including tablet and phone
- be as easy to deploy as possible
- be flexible for users and customisable for clients
- provide a great set of research tools
- interface with all sorts of existing tools from Twitter to citation software

We've called it iNQUIRE and it's now available for your institution. There's more here and take a look at the first project we're just completing with the Bodleian.