User:Geni/2D barcodes and museums

A proposal for the use of 2D barcodes in museums.

The problem

It would be nice to be able to walk through a museum and pull up the relevant wikipedia article on whatever you were looking at. Augmented reality currently allows this outdoors through the use of GPS when dealing with fairly large objects (say buildings) but most museum exhibits are too small for GPS to work, and being inside creates further issues.

GPS is however good enough for large exibits such as HMS Alliance and existing augmented reality technology will handle such cases.

The 2D barcode solution

Camera phones can read 2D barcodes and the code can be used to transmit URLs. These URLs can be used to get people to wikipedia articles. At the present time QR code is the most mature technology. Other code types could be used but fewer people could read them at this time.

The implementation

A mockup. In this case the code points at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:1/1 With the first "1" being Southsea castle and the second being the number given to the cannon

A 2D barcode wiki or namespace would be set up. Tagged objects would point to entries in this namespace which would redirect to relevant articles (or in some cases disambiguate. The idea would be to have one code per specimen so even if several museums had say a biber submarine each would get it's own code.

URLs could be generated by assigning each object an arbitrary number or by assigning it an number (perhaps it's existing catalogue number) within the museum it is in and then assigning each museum a number. So:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:1/1

Where the first "1" is the number assigned to the museum or institution and the second is the item within the museum.

In the case of our example the page could point to Joseph Whitworth or Polygonal rifling. A mockup can be found at User:Geni/Code:1/1 the talk page would have a brief description of what the object was where it was (institution name and geocode of the institution) and probably a link to any photos of the object on commons. In the case of our mockup:

• Hexagonally rifled 3 pounder cannon manufactured by Joseph Whitworth
• Southsea Castle
• 50° 46′ 41″ N, 1° 5′ 20″ W

The information could be held in an infobox or the like.

How to get started

A namespace would require dev coperation. It would be best to start with a small museum and we have a better chance of getting such a museum to agree. Chapeter contacts might be useful. Setting up a QR code generator on the toolsever would also be useful.

Advantages

Posible to do with current tech and fairly easy to implement and scale.

Disadvantages

Relies on museums cooperating.