Booksnake

Explore history in the real world with Booksnake. View digitized items at life size in your space.

Just aim your iPhone or iPad at a flat surface, tap the screen to place your item, and move around to explore. Get in close to see fine details. Step back for an overview. Or walk around to see your item from all sides. As you move, Booksnake keeps the virtual item pinned in place—exactly where you want it.

Booksnake currently offers access to more than three million digitized items held by the Library of Congress, including historical maps, books, manuscripts, newspapers, and more. What will you discover?

Booksnake is designed and built by Sean Fraga, Christy Ye, Henry Huang, Zack Sai, Michael Hughes, April Yao, Ben Crotty, and Dhruv Kaul, with additional research by Yating Li, and with support from Peter Mancall, Amy Braden, Curtis Fletcher, Samir Ghosh, and Mats Borges.

Booksnake is produced at the University of Southern California. Booksnake is a joint project of the Humanities in a Digital World program in the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, and the Ahmanson Lab, a scholarly innovation space in USC Libraries. The Humanities in a Digital World program was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The National Endowment for the Humanities provided major financial support for Booksnake's development via the Digital Humanities Advancement Grant program.