[WEB4LIB] Librarian Bots To The Rescue!

[Roy Tennant]

I hate to rain on their robotic parade (well, maybe I don't!), but they 
have done an astonishingly incomplete economic analysis. Admittedly, 
this is work done by a graduate student, but nonetheless after a lengthy 
discussion of the costs of the robotic system, the only comparison made 
with any other (one might say more attainable) scenario was limited to a 
two paragraph discussion of ILL costs! How about a web-based requesting 
interface linked to a live, warm, student assistant?

All of the costs for special boxes, lost storage space (due to the 
necessity of not having any of the boxes touch!), etc. would disappear, 
not mention the costs related to creating, manufacturing, and 
maintaining the robot. The unfortunate thing is that their proposed 
system may actually make some sense in particular circumstances, but it 
is difficult to tell when the work is too incomplete from which to make 
informed decisions.
Roy Tennant


On Thursday, June 27, 2002, at 05:01 AM, Blake Carver wrote:

> "In Remote Library Stacks, an All-Seeing, Scanning Robot"
>
> Here's One from The NYTimes on libraries of the future, partially run 
> by by
> robotic systems linked to the Internet. They now have a robot that can 
> move
> about inside a library and locate a book requested by a user, take it 
> off
> the shelf and carry it to a nearby scanning station. In the system's
> envisaged final version, a second robot at the scanning station would 
> scan
> specific pages of the book that the user was interested in. The user 
> would
> then be able to leaf through the book over the Internet from any 
> location.
>
> Here's the Realllllly Log URL:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/27/technology/circuits/27NEXT.html?ex=1025841600&
> en=1f5771200b66974d&ei=5006&partner=ALTAVISTA
>
> This project is over at Johns Hopkins, and has A Web Site.
> http://dkc.mse.jhu.edu/CAPM/
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------
> Blake Carver
> Web Librarian
> The Ohio State University Libraries
> carver.50 at osu.edu
> 247-7424
>
>
>