As more confront building decisions over the next decade, a “significant number” will very likely go the Chicago route, predicts Richard W. A small but growing group of universities has already adopted it.
That technology may be coming soon to a library near you. Its underground storage system can place a bound volume in faculty fingers less than five minutes after getting the request. But unlike others, it didn’t relieve that crunch by exiling collections to remote locations or disposing of little-used holdings. Like other libraries, Chicago’s faced the problem of bulging stacks. For all its gee-whiz gadgetry, the building is actually an $81-million bet that researchers still need ready access to a much older technology: print. Lee’s insatiable robot is a computer system that directs mechanical cranes to store those bins in giant stacks and retrieve them when patrons request their contents.Īnother “bookless library” for the digital age? No. “You feel like you’re feeding this giant robot,” says Victoria Lee, an anthropology major who earns $11.15 an hour stuffing bound journals into steel bins. Their mission: Load a million volumes into a machine-dominated warehouse that most library patrons will never see.
At the University of Chicago’s new library, 70 students have summer jobs filling a chilly subterranean bunker 50 feet beneath the main reading room.
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