In modern times we rely heavily on automation to help us retrieve information and resources. Many of today’s resources have been digitised and reside on a server somewhere in the world, ready for retrieval with a few key strokes on the world wide web.
Even physical resources are now being left in the capable hands of machines.
More and more libraries, particularly academic, are investing in huge automated resource retrieval systems like this one at Macquarie University library in Sydney, Australia. This collection holds those resources which are not used as often in storage space that takes up only one seventh of traditional library shelving. Books are retrieved from the big tubs they are stored in by a robotic arm.
This video explains how a similar system is being used at the University of Chicago’s Joe and Rika Mansueto Library.
And now a peek back to the early 20th century at New York Public Library, where elevators were utilised to bring books up from stacks deep within the library.
And now even more ‘old school’, back to 1874, where ladders, stairs and shoe leather did all the work at the public library of Cincinnati.
For more photos of libraries from the past go to Retronaut.
"The library, and step on it" 