# Ideas for a future interface for BHL **URL:** \ **Category:** Feature Ideas\ **Tags:** iiif, ocr, hathi, responsive\ **Created:** [May 8, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/t/ideas-for-a-future-interface-for-bhl/113 "2026-05-08T14:42:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rdmpage](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/user_avatar/forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/rdmpage/32/8_2.png) [@rdmpage](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/u/rdmpage)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/t/ideas-for-a-future-interface-for-bhl/113/1 "2026-05-08T14:42:55Z")
I have been experimenting with possible interfaces to BHL content and thoyght I’d share a live demo to one idea I’ve been working on. It is inspired by the viewer used by the redesigned Hathi website: [https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435064358328&seq=15](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=osu.32435064358328&seq=15). This viewer is clean and responsive, that is, it will scale approrpriately depending on what device you are using (phone, tablet, desktop). So I got Claude Code to help me make a demo of something similar for a BHL item. ![Screenshot 2026-05-08 at 15.15.47](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/uploads/biodivlibrary/original/1X/2081c01ffdcbe610446446c7ec9c520877259719.jpeg) You can see the live version here: > **[Responsive Sidebar — mockup v3](https://rdmpage.github.io/responsive-viewer/)** if you are code curious, then have a look at [GitHub - rdmpage/responsive-viewer: Experiments with a responsive viewer, inspired by Hathi. · GitHub](https://github.com/rdmpage/responsive-viewer) . This demo is a prototype only, and doesn’t do things such as display list of taxonomic names for each page, but it enables browsing across a range of devices. For fun I’ve also added IIIF display if you think of BHL as a series of pictures rather than text. Speaking of text I have also included OCR text, but not in the way you might be used to seeing OCR text. It’s not a simple dump of some text, but structured text complete with embedding figures extracted from the pages. It’s readable, and pretty close to what the original publisher would display on their website. One could imagine a BHL where text would be a first class citizen. In this example the article citaes a lot of papers that are themselves in BHL. The dream would be to link those ciattions to the content in BHL, so readers could seamlessly navigate through BHL, following the trail authors have created as they cite previous work. ---
**Author:** ![jdustinwilliams](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/user_avatar/forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/jdustinwilliams/32/87_2.png) [@jdustinwilliams](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/u/jdustinwilliams)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2026, 6:45pm UTC](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/t/ideas-for-a-future-interface-for-bhl/113/2 "2026-05-09T18:45:07Z")
That is a nice, clean interface. The formatted text is well done. Was that generated with Mistral-OCR? ---
**Author:** ![rdmpage](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex033/user_avatar/forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/rdmpage/32/8_2.png) [@rdmpage](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/u/rdmpage)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2026, 6:51pm UTC](https://forum.biodiversitylibrary.org/t/ideas-for-a-future-interface-for-bhl/113/3 "2026-05-09T18:51:05Z")
No, I used DataLab > **[Datalab](https://www.datalab.to)** > > High-precision document intelligence. Transform unstructured content into precise, production-ready data with Datalab. I have been using them on and off for a while. They have code on GitHub, although I get the sense that their web version (that they charge for) has better performance (not just because of the better hardware). Their API is constantly changing 🙈 which is a pain, but they were the first AI OCR that I came across that was usable and high quality.