British Library's Online Gallery: Turning the Pages- Great for an interactive whiteboard or display

The British Library offers an on-line interactive gallery, "Turn the Pages" , where you can "turn" the pages of great books, page by page, view additional information about the information of the page you are looking at, and also listen to an audio description. You also have the option of using a magnifying feature that you can move over the surface of the page to get a closer view of the text or illustrations.

If you have an interactive touch screen display or whiteboard, you can turn the pages with your hand, and also move the magnifying viewport about the screen. What a great resource for the classroom!

Here is additional information from the "Turning the Pages" website that will help you get started:

"The standard version of Turning the Pages™ uses the Shockwave plugin, which can be downloaded from the Adobe website, to simulate the action of turning the pages of a real book. For Mac OS X users there is an alternative download. The volumes may not open if you block popups on your computer. Technical specification"

"A new version, Turning the Pages 2.0™, runs on Microsoft Vista operating system (and on Windows XP with the .NET 3 framework). It will also run on other operating systems using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. Technical specification"

"And there are alternative versions which do not need a plugin but display static images (and enlargements) in standard web pages, in the same window."

Here are some sample titles:

Masterpiece of the Renaissance, Landmarks in Medical History, Glimpses of Medieval Art, Mozart's Musical Diary (with 75 audio excerpts), 15th-Century Church Book, Flemish Masters in Miniature,
Sketches by Leonardo, Classic of Botanical Illustration, The Original Alice, by Lewis Carrol....