MetaLibrary: Towards social immersive environments for readers

The continuous integration of cutting-edge technologies in various fields such as culture and education is leading institutions towards a radical digital evolution. This work studies how one of the key actors of these domains, i.e., libraries, could exploit the digital trans- formation to reaffirm their position as primary cultural institutions in today’s society. Indeed, there is consensus that, among technologies that could be used to modernize libraries and help them to reach a wider audience, there are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and immersive media like Virtual Reality (VR). In particular, VR has been used to create social platforms that users can join from remote, experiencing virtual environments (VEs) where they can share opinions and perform activities together, thus creating a digital community. In this context, MetaLibrary was created, an immersive VE designed to let readers socialize, attend events with authors, and receive suggestions about books to read from an AI-based recommender system. Deployment is in progress in the city of Turin, Italy.