It's time to...
Watch the short video below and geek out with me!
The University of Chicago Joe and Rika Mansueto Library has a really cool storage and retrieval system -- it's a giant ROBOT. The system stores materials based on their physical size rather than the traditional subjects. Each item is barcoded to help track it in the system.
HOW COOL.
Seriously, this type of technology seems like it's been lifted straight from 1984 by George Orwell. I know some people will worry about future employment prospects for librarians, but I don't worry about it myself. For one thing, computers and robots are only as good as their inputs. A system on the scale of the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library absolutely requires human interaction to ensure it functions properly and smoothly. There may come a day when humans are needed less and less for this type of work. However, humans will continue to need other humans so librarianship of the future may become even more customer-focused (hard to imagine, I know!). I would even go so far to say that librarians may get to come out from behind the desk to perform other service-based duties because we will need the human interaction to balance all of the potential robotics with which we'll interface. Just a hunch.
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