[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Floor Plan - Map - Drawing Software

[Jim Taylor]

It has been a few years so recalling this from my dusty memory collection but a few years ago I saw a presentation by someone in the Horizon Library world who mapped all his shelves using GPS.   So when you looked up an item it would dynamically show you where the item was located.  Things are even more sophisticated now so you could even provide "Directions" now on peoples phones.   Click a link and tell it to "Start" and it would take them to the right shelves.   Probably one additional table in the database to map Location/Collection/Call# codes to GPS coordinates and maybe a bit of map creation and away you go.   If you wanted to get really fancy you could even do a StreetView kind of thing for your library so they could "See" where they needed to go.   Or even fancier, put in LED tiles for flooring and then you could light up tiles for them to follow.   Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.   Sounds like a fun project though.

Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Open-ils-general <open-ils-general-bounces at list.georgialibraries.org> On Behalf Of jeff haskell
Sent: Monday, July 9, 2018 11:54 AM
To: open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
Subject: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Floor Plan - Map - Drawing Software

Hi,

I'm new to the list.

I'm interested in drawing software so patrons and new staff, volunteers and student interns can find materials on shelves easily and quickly.

Ex. one set of shelves to the far left of the circulation desk would be labeled Fiction. Then the next set of shelves named Mystery in the shelves bay to the right of the Fiction shelves bay and then to the right of that the shelves Bay for Supernatural.

This would be a floor plan so a patron could walk around the library and look at this floor plan map and know where Fiction is - where Mystery is, Biography, etc. for every collection throughout the library.

If I sat with an illustrator they could probably draw it all up in about 20-30 minutes and I would just scan what they drew and have a map (crude compared to a 3D) but enough so a patron could find items.

But, is there any *free* software which could accomplish that?

Thank you.