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New York Public Library's Very Cool Robotic Librarian

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First Posted: 06/22/10 06:12 AM ET Updated: 05/25/11 05:15 PM ET

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The New York Times:

Here is how it works: On one side of the machine, which is two-thirds the length of a football field and encircled by a conveyor belt, staff members place each book face-down on a separate panel of the belt. The book passes under a laser scanner, which reads the bar code on the back cover, and the sorter communicates with the library's central computer system to determine where the book should be headed. Then, as the conveyor belt moves along, it drops the book into one of 132 bins, each associated with a branch library. It's sort of like a baggage carousel that knows which bag is yours and deposits it at your feet.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

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sandmadd
5 Fans
02:31 PM on 04/26/2010
The Los Angeles Public Library has a book distribution system like the kind NYPL used to have: labor-intensive, inefficient, carpal tunnel inducing. It can take a week or more to have a book delivered from the Central Library of LAPL to one of its branches.
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Kat Wright
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08:10 PM on 04/23/2010
I dont know if it works the same way in Brooklyn but I have been getting my holds faster.
Also sadly I have to disagree with people but most of the librarians will be eliminated in the next couple of years. I have been in an automated library, a brand new one in Brooklyn. Self check-out and book drops with no people. There was only one security guy and one person in the information desk instead of the 6-7 ppl I usually see at non-automated branches. Instead of paying people there were more copies of the same book and a lot of DVDs which is a rarity.
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cnobody
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10:11 AM on 04/23/2010
until the robot gets its Masters from an ALA accredited school, it's not a librarian. ;-)
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lastpost
see biography
313 Fans
08:17 AM on 04/23/2010
“Here is how it works:â€

It uses ergs, rather than electrons. A means by which, all the books/written material, in all the languages, in all the world, could be instantly made available to digital reading tablets loaned out by libraries. And with the funds saved, the staff retrained. To tutor the population in the obligatory reading and writing skills necessary to capitalise on their abilities.
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