This paper presents an application of QR code marking of digi

tal iconographical collections from the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library (BIDL) for their outdoor

mobile access and exploring through the GUIDE@HAND audio tourist guide

Luchev, Detelin

Márkus, Zsolt László

Paneva-Marinova, Desislava

Szkaliczki, Tibor

SZTAKI Publication Repository

МАТЕМАТИКА И МАТЕМАТИЧЕСКО ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ, 2014MATHEMATICS AND EDUCATION IN MATHEMATICS, 2014Proceedings of the Forty Third Spring Conferenceof the Union of Bulgarian MathematiciansBorovetz, April 2–6, 2014MOBILE ACCESS TO SPECIMENS OF BULGARIANICONOGRAPHY THROUGH QR CODE IN A GPS-BASEDINFORMATION SYSTEM *Desislava Paneva-Marinova, Detelin Luchev, Zsolt La´szlo´ Ma´rkus,Tibor SzkaliczkiThis paper presents an application of QR code marking of digital iconographical col-lections from the Bulgarian Iconographical Digital Library (BIDL) for their outdoormobile access and exploring through the GUIDE@HAND audio tourist guide.1. Introduction. In the digital age the mobile devices, the Internet and ICT changedour daily life and routines. They give us information anywhere (work, home, holiday,etc.) and anytime and it is not far from the truth if we say that we couldn’t live withoutthese services and devices anymore.The GUIDE@HAND application is an audio tour guide that helps tourists to discoverthe city or region with turn-by-turn navigation. It guides them from one interesting sightto the next presenting all information and stories at the right time and at the right place.GUIDE@HAND is developed by the Computer and Automation Research Institute ofthe Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI). It is available on mobile devices(e.g., smartphone, tablet) with Global Positioning System (GPS) exactly determining thelocation of the traveller. GUIDE@HAND provides guided walks with various durations.During the walks, tourists may gain standalone unique knowledge about the sights andattractions of a town or region. The aim is to enable the visitors to change their view onnew or familiar locations, objects and motives and explore the past and present of theirown neighborhood in an entertaining and informative way.GUIDE@HAND overcomes the disadvantages of world travel mobile applications asGoogle Maps (on-line mode) and of classical navigation programs as iGO, Garmin Nav-igator, etc. (no cultural and historical information for the POI – Points Of Interestobjects). Compared to other applications as Geolover – Travel Guide, for example,GUIDE@HAND support correctly the Cyrillic alphabet and in its Global Version it hasmany advantages over the Bulgarian local mobile applications for cities and events asSofia, Bulgaria – Free Travel Guide, Burgas Tourist Guide, Visit Burgas, etc. Anotherone of the most important factors in spreading out GUIDE@ HAND is that the appli-cation is available on both iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android based mobile devices. The*2010 Mathematics Subject Classification: 68U99.Key words: QR Code, Digital Collection, Exhibition Technologies, Tourist Guide Application,Mobile Applications, Bulgarian Iconography, Digital LibraryThis work is under a joint IMI-BAS – MTA SZTAKI cooperation project Development of SoftwareSystems for Multimedia and Language Technologies.180current release of the GUIDE@HAND application supports an extended QR code servicefor art exploring and learning [1][2]. This service is now applied in churches, monaster-ies, museums, collections, etc. accessing collections of iconographical objects from theBulgarian Iconographical Digital Library (BIDL, http://bidl.math.bas.bg).The paper presents an application of QR code-marked digital iconographical collec-tions and its mobile exploring in the GUIDE@HAND Tourist Guide Application.2. Functionality for Guided Mobile Access to Iconographical Collectionsin the BIDL. Over the last years several initiatives were carried out worldwide towardson-line documentation, exposure, storage and preservation of cultural heritage. In thisframework, many valuable masterpieces of Orthodox iconography have been digitalizedand appeared in the virtual space. However, rare specimens, private collections, iconsfrom difficult-to-access storages, distant churches, chapels, and monasteries, objects in arisk environment or unstable conditions were almost “untangible” for the e-user. In anattempt to answer these needs of wider accessibility of iconographical objects, a teamfrom the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics has developed a multimedia digitallibrary called Virtual Encyclopaedia of Bulgarian Iconography [3, 4, 5]. Moreover, newfunctionalities for QR code maintenance and mobile oﬄine BIDL Mode are created. ThisInternet-based environment is already becoming a place where Orthodox iconographicalobjects of different kinds and origins were documented, classified, and “exhibited” andits collections could be accessed trough mobile devices in guided tours.The next figure depicts an UML Use Case Diagram of these new services.Two new extension points for the presentation layer of BIDL were defined:Fig. 1. UML Use Case Diagram181• Oﬄine mobile mode for BIDL collections.• Content accessibility through QR codes for all of the BIDL collections.The following main features are implemented:• QR Code generation, which implements the content accessibility through QR codes,and• Generation of oﬄine archives (according to the G@H specifications), implementingthe oﬄine mobile mode for BIDL collections.The presentation layer of BIDL was extended by new mobile templates and function-ality for automatic bulk creation of web content, based on the mobile templates and thecollections data.The created mobile templates are used as a master page for a collection and as adetailed view of a certain object.Figure 2 depicts the extension of the current BIDL design architecture. There is acontroller responsible for the oﬄine archive creation extending the Collection Manage-ment and Presentation services, and a controller for the QR codes generation, whichextends the Collection creation service. Main newly developed entities are the mobiletemplates and the generated QR codes.Fig. 2. Design Class DiagramFigure 3 depicts the QR accessibility point from the BIDL desktop mode web pagefor an icon collection from the Regional History Museum in Veliko Tarnovo. Figure 4shows the master and detailed collection mobile template presenting the iconographicalcontent in the GUIDE@HAND application.A migration process was developed to support the QR creation of the existing collec-tions in BIDL.The creation of oﬄine archives was developed as a real time process, which buildsthe collection archive every time a QR mobile request is made. The purpose of this realtime archive creation is to preserve the content dynamics, because the BIDL collectionsare “alive”, not static, and are not dependent on some set of objects, but on some set ofcharacteristics of objects.182Fig. 3. Collection of icons from Regional History Museum in Veliko TarnovoFig. 4. Master and detailed collection mobile template3. GUIDE@HAND presentation of the iconographical content. To view aBIDL collection in GUIDE@HAND, the user has to use the built-in QR code readerfunctionality of the mobile application. This functionality has already been implementedbefore the BIDL-GUIDE@HAND integration. The result of scanning the BIDL QR code(Fig. 5) is an URL pointing to the BIDL archive file which can be downloaded from theBIDL web server. The GUIDE@HAND application analyses whether or not the URLpoints to the BIDL web server and if a match is detected the application will start todownload the archive file. Once the file is fully downloaded the application will extractthe archive’s content into a predefined directory structure.There is a screen in the GUIDE@HAND application called My collections which isavailable from the main menu of the application. Opening this screen will read up the183Fig. 5. QR code for the icons collection of Museum of wood-carving and iconography art,Tryavna, Bulgariadirectory where the downloaded collections are stored. It will find the BIDL collectionthe user has just downloaded. The application will read the collection’s name fromthe collection.name.txt file for every downloaded collection and display those for theuser in a full screen list. When the user selects the BIDL collection from the list, theapplication will open a web browser and display the content of the oﬄine index.htmlfile.This will result in displaying the content of the collection for the user on the screenof the mobile device. The bidle.css and bidle.js files will ensure that the content isdisplayed in a mobile optimized manner.The GUIDE@HAND header never disappears while browsing the content. On the leftside of the header there is a Back button. Pressing this button will take the user backto the My collections list.The user can use the QR code reader any time to rescan the BIDL QR code. This willactualize the oﬄine content by deleting the directory of the collection and downloadingthe BIDL archive file again.For each row in the My collections list there is a Delete button which the user canpress to delete the directory for that collection, thus removing the collection from thelist as well. These buttons are invisible by default to prevent accidental deletion. Theuser has to either swipe their finger on the desired row in the list (iOS) or press themain Delete button in the upper right corner of the My collections screen to displaythe Delete buttons in all the rows in the list. Once displayed the Delete button can bepressed which will show first a deletion confirmation message to the user. The collectionwill be deleted from the device only after the user confirms this request.In case there is no collection in the My collections list the GUIDE@HAND appli-cation will display information to the user about where to find the BIDL website andhow to start to create collections.4. Conclusion. The presented development attempts to encompass the opportunitiesfor applying QR codes for iconographical art exhibitions. GUIDE@HAND application is184now in process of inclusion of a complete tour of Arbanassi churches, preserving valuableartefacts of the Bulgarian iconography. A demo of short tour showing 3 churches isprepared. The GUIDE@HAND Bulgarian interface is already prepared.REFERENCES[1] Z. Ma´rkus, B. Wagner. GUIDE@HAND: digital GPS based audio guide that brings thepast to life. In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Digital Presentationand Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage (DiPP2011), 11–14 September, 2011,Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, vol. 1, 2011, 15–25.[2] E. Ba´rd, Z. Ma´rkus. Extending the GUIDE@HAND tourist guide application with QRCodes for Museum Learning. In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference onDigital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage (DiPP2012), 18–21 September, 2012, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, vol. 2, 2012, 19–26.[3] R. Pavlov, D. Paneva-Marinnova, M. Goynov, L. Pavlova-Draganova. Services forCon-tent Creation and Presentation in an Iconographical Digital Library. Serdica Journalof Computing, 4 (2010), 279–292.[4] L. Pavlova-Draganova, V. Georgiev, L. Draganov. Virtual Encyclopaedia of Bul-garian Iconography. Information Technologies&Knowledge, 1, 3 (2007), 267–271.[5] L. Pavlova-Draganova, D. Paneva-Marinova, R. Pavlov, M. Goynov. On the WiderAc-cessibility of the Valuable Phenomena of Orthodox Iconography through Digital Library.In: 3rd International Conference dedicated on Digital Heritage (EuroMed 2010), Lymassol,Cyprus, 2010, 173–178.Desislava Ivanova Paneva-Marinovae-mail: dessi@cc.bas.bgDetelin Mihailov Lucheve-mail: luchev detelin@abv.bgMathematical Linguistics DepartmentInstitute of Mathematicsand InformaticsBulgarian Academy of SciencesAcad. G. Bonchev Str., Bl. 81113 Sofia, BulgariaZsolt La´szlo´ Ma´rkuse-mail: markus.zsolt@sztaki.mta.huTibor Szkaliczkie-mail: szkaliczki.tibor@sztaki.mta.hueLearning DepartmentComputer and Automation Research InstituteHungarian Academy of Sciences(MTA SZTAKI)11, La´gyma´nyosi Str.1111 Budapest, HungaryМОБИЛЕН ДОСТЪП ДО ОБРАЗЦИ НА БЪЛГАРСКАТАИКОНОГРАФИЯ ЧРЕЗ QR КОД В GPS-БАЗИРАНАИНФОРМАЦИОННА СИСТЕМАДесислава Панева-Маринова, Детелин Лучев, Жолт Ласло Маркус,Тибор СкалицкиДокладът представя приложението на маркирането на цифрови иконографскиколекции от „Виртуална енциклопедия на българската иконография“ чрез QRкод за тяхното мобилно използване и достъп посредством GPS-базиран туристи-чески аудио пътеводител GUIDE@HAND.185

Mobile Access to Specimens of Bulgarian Iconography Through QR Code in a GPS-Based Information System

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