OpenBooks is an interactive table specifically designed to integrate the best part of online book shopping into the experience of browsing your local bookshop. As more people become accustomed to reading other shoppers’ reviews before making their purchases, OpenBooks provides the same opportunity in-store.


An OpenBooks table could be set up in any location around the store, or even in the bookstore’s cafe area. The interface is simple. As a user places a book on the table, the barcode/ISBN number is scanned and relevant reviews are read from the internet — in this case, Amazon.com. Multiple books can be placed on the table so that the user can compare and contrast reviews in order to choose the best book. The user is able to scroll through the reviews and also see editorial opinions as well.


OpenBooks uses the Kinect and the OpenCV libraries to track the books. It is programmed using OpenFrameworks. The book’s barcodes are scanned by a webcam and decoded with Processing.