On the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Vodafone and the British Library have made some of the earliest and rarest editions of Shakespeare’s plays available to all, allowing people to download the Bard’s most popular works from specially-designed wallpaper featuring virtual library bookshelves.
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The pop-up Digital Library is providing new access to free digital copies of the quartos by allowing people to simply scan the QR codes printed on the virtual books as the ‘digital library’ tours the UK. The wallpaper will also provide digital links through to the British Library’s Discovering Literature website, revealing more about the world of Shakespeare and his plays, from King Lear and madness to the violence of Romeo & Juliet and the life of the Bard himself. Scan the QR Code of a Book on the Digital Library Wallpaper, Digital Version Appears on Your Device (Source: Vodafone)
The Digital Library will encourage young and old across the nation to remember the great works of the playwright, poet and pioneer and celebrate his achievements as new research released by Vodafone today found that almost one in ten Brits were unable to recall who William Shakespeare is and more surprisingly a quarter of the nation (25%) are unaware of his work, claiming he wrote motion picture titles such as Love Actually, Titanic and Shakespeare in Love.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.