RISD “thesis” project for a website search engine that uses non-traditional methods to gain Artist Book results within Rhode Island School of Design’s Artist Book Collection.

Let’s go back to 2007, I was in my senior year and searching for a project that would be A. interesting/ complex enough to work on for 3 semesters and B. do something for the  community at RISD.

RISD has a giant collection of artist book and journals within their library collection. Unfortunately they are cataloged in such obscureness it’s almost impossible to get a “hit” on them within the school’s card catalog system. For the lucky few that actually magically find them – they are the holy grail – these journals and books are literally one of a kind masterpieces. Since many of the books are donated by past students – some actually spell out how to survive specific classes. Sadly, these books rarely see the light of day – they are tucked within the special collections area of the library and don’t show up within the computerized search system. I spoke with the “head” librarian and was informed that many of the books are unserachable becuase they are sort of uncategorizable… some of these books are literally made of leaves or can only be read backwards…they don’t fit into the standardized system and to make it even more difficult since they weren’t published they don’t have ISBN numbers (obviously).

Such and interesting problem…  I decided to devise a sort of non-traditional search tactic. Since the books didn’t fit into a regular searchable database I established a more organic search. It’s a bit estate sale meets dating service, basically the library’s search system would have a series of non-traditional questions that the searcher would answer. For example I search for a book that is “accordion fold” rather than getting results about how to construct an accordion fold book or how to play the accordion I actually get a book in accordion format. The search went more untraditional still with the ability choosing objects or pictures – I liken it to rummaging at an estate sale – You know what you’re looking for when you find it… and have no idea what you’re looking for… like I said untraditional.

The end result is a site that allows for both methods of searching and leads to organic search results. Demoing this system yeilding some exciting results – the results a lot of the time were not accurate [fail!] however the books themselves were so interesting students didn’t seem to mind[win!].