Uncovering Discover

Uncovering Discover is a data visualization I was invited to develop for the University of Illinois Library. The goal was to visualize in real-time (or as close as possible) the several thousand daily requests coming in and out of the Library’s Discover system, which is an online full-text article retrieval service based on Ex Libris SFX.

The front end display was built in Processing and is intended to run as a standalone application in a gallery-style environment. The back end utilizes XML feeds generated from the bowels of SFX – many thanks to Sharif Islam for his diligent work creating the feeds, and modifying them based on my frequent whims.

The project is currently on display via a large plasma display at the Grainger Engineering Library at the UIUC campus, and will likely tour some other locations.

Much appreciation to Susan Harum, Lori Mestre, and John Weible for their coordination and support of this project.