Add to the list of jobs that are apparently too boring for Americans: sorting books. The New York Public Library has installed an enormous machine in a warehouse in Queens to handle the task of redistributing borrowed books among the city’s branches. The New York Times reports that the automation “has eliminated much of the drudgery since it was turned on two months ago.”
One thing that is clear from this is that if an organization has the funds, it will try to replace bored humans with sturdy machines.
My first reaction to this was to mourn the loss of humans’ ability to do menial, physical tasks, but then I realized that this product is an good example of what happens when ingenuity and economics meet and fall in love. The use of the multi-million dollar machine has cut the need for permanent staff, increased the amount of materials that can be sorted in one day, and decreased the time it takes for books to be transferred between locations. The city will likely see a budget savings over time, and hopefully employ more staff in other departments such as digital archiving and public reference desks.
Most large library systems already contract cleaning services and database providers, so automated inter-library sorting systems could be a potentially good business opportunity. Private markets could share county/regional systems, and governments and schools could have their own networks. Humans still have to do some of the work making sure the machines keep running.
Innovation in the Public Library
25 Apr 2010 at 10:54
admin
Commentary
automation books librarianship public library
Add to the list of jobs that are apparently too boring for Americans: sorting books. The New York Public Library has installed an enormous machine in a warehouse in Queens to handle the task of redistributing borrowed books among the city’s branches. The New York Times reports that the automation “has eliminated much of the drudgery since it was turned on two months ago.”
One thing that is clear from this is that if an organization has the funds, it will try to replace bored humans with sturdy machines.
My first reaction to this was to mourn the loss of humans’ ability to do menial, physical tasks, but then I realized that this product is an good example of what happens when ingenuity and economics meet and fall in love. The use of the multi-million dollar machine has cut the need for permanent staff, increased the amount of materials that can be sorted in one day, and decreased the time it takes for books to be transferred between locations. The city will likely see a budget savings over time, and hopefully employ more staff in other departments such as digital archiving and public reference desks.
Most large library systems already contract cleaning services and database providers, so automated inter-library sorting systems could be a potentially good business opportunity. Private markets could share county/regional systems, and governments and schools could have their own networks. Humans still have to do some of the work making sure the machines keep running.
The New York Public Library seems optimistic.