coverflow and interactive visual displays of images representing texts

On Tame the Web, Kyle has written a good roundup of library user interfaces based on Apple's "coverflow" style image browser. As always, the key observation is that book designers and publishers put a lot of effort into making the cover of a book be something to make you understand what's inside the book, and browsing displays that take advantage of that can be super effective in helping you sift through new materials quickly.

One thing I observed in looking at the coverflow based interfaces compared to the other page by page book browsing tools e.g. Google Books is the difference in direction and orientation that the systems have. With many online text tools, the assumption is that you are reading from an infinite scroll top to bottom, and that the page extends forever down. The coverflow world gives you that same sense of infinite possibility left to right. Somehow that change in orientation makes it that much more familiar to grasp, and I'm not sure why.