Low (left) and Ag Asri holding the first augmented reality folklore book in Malaysia.
KOTA KINABALU: The first augmented reality folklore book in Malaysia – ‘The Giant and The Longhouse Folk’ was launched yesterday.
The book is the innovative result from a collaboration of two Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) lecturers, Professor Dr Low Kok On (Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Heritage) and Professor Madya Dr Ag Asri Ag Ibrahim (Faculty of Computing and Informatics).
The publication of the folklore book came into reality after an agreement on publishing collaboration between Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) and Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP) was signed earlier this year.
“It took us about four years to complete this book, including several visits to Sabah interiors to get the stories from the ground. There are three stories in the book with 27 riddles from various ethnics of Kadazan and Dusun in Sabah, which is called ‘sundait’. The origin of two stories in the book are from the people of Kimaragang and Tobilung, and the other one is from various versions of Kadazan and Dusun ethnic folklore,” said Low.
The book won three local and international awards four years ago.
The launching ceremony yesterday was officiated by Assistant Minister of Education and Innovation, Mohammad Mohamarin.
During his speech, Mohammad praised the collaboration between UMS and DBP in publishing the book.
He pointed out the effort of publishing the augmented reality book is a stepping stone for the two entities to come up with bigger collaborations in the future.
‘The Giant and The Longhouse Folk’ book is priced at RM18 and is also available in Bahasa Malaysia.
Also present at the event yesterday were DBP Sabah director Aminah Awang Basar, and UMS deputy vice-chancellor (Research and Innovation) Professor Dr Shahril Yusof.