The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library: How It Works

[Geckuno]

Mava 314 için geldiyseniz çok geç hacı ben kaptım =p

[LisaRosaBella]

They can't scan the items into a computer because of copyright law.

[marleyluber]

Only at UC would they have something so incredible

[potpie921]

amazing!

[nelrish24]

wonderful!

[Tomsejnik]

I need something like this to store my things, my house is already full of important things

(junk)

[cyclestring]

nice way to preserve books. . but a not so nice way in energy consumption. .

[InsertNameWhere]

@cyclestring I see your concern, but remember a big part of the energy used by the cranes is offset by the naturally lit reading room (at least during the daytime) and by the underground storage which is naturally at a cool, optimal temperature for storing books.

[iceplee1973]

I wonder how much energy it consumes, and are the books kept in the same bin all the time or they are randomly assigned once they have retrieved?

[naQuinIv5]

Too bad there's not some sort of global internetwork capable of storing, instantaneously searching hundreds of trillions of books, and displaying their information on glowing screens..... oh. wait...

At least drunken college kids will get to ride the cranes.

[modelsnbottles]

@naQuinIv5 university of chicago kids don't get drunk

[vonspre]

Helmut Jahn is a genius...

[slgrach]

@dabooblabob I didn't say that it would replace browsing the stacks (of course it doesn't), I said that it was either having the books on the site stored underground or having it in off-site storage. I'd imagine that picking up the book five minutes later and realizing it wasn't actually useful would be a lot better than realizing it hours, even a day, later.

And like predicto said, the books stored are not "popular." It's just possible that the new books might be more relevant.

[predicto]

You people are idiots. Not all of the library collection is stored down there - just all of the more obscure books that rarely get checked out. The stacks are still full of millions of volumes of browsing material.

[slgrach]

@dabooblabob It was either this or create an off-site library that would STILL keep you from flipping through the books on the shelves. The Regenstein (along with other collections) was considered to be over-filled, and technically did not have enough room to efficiently supply new books. So now the books are at least still on campus (though they can also all be "flipped through" online), and students can instead browse new books that will probably be more relevant.

[SYLBM]

i guess it saves a bit of time. looks cool.

i wonder how much energy it tastes to move those huge cranes around all the time and how much it will cost to keep them running efficiently, and how much it cost to build the underground database.

[christophla]

They should have spent the money scanning all of the books into a computer

[slgrach]

@christophla The common characteristic between all of the books in Mansueto is that they are all digitally indexed and can be found online. The storage site allows students who want the actual book to still be able to access it while, at the same time, opening up space in a library that was already far over-capacity.

[NibbleHusky]

I really dont see the point of it. I can probably search faster for the book and have it readily available for me to view it for the time it takes for that robot to retrieve it.

[fuunguus]

Y U NO USE INTERNET?

[patienceking]

A powered machine has to move over 100 pounds of books each time one book is requested. That seems rather wasteful.

[bludstone]

What happens if the dome breaks and then it rains?

[MrYousafBajwa]

@bludstone its all underground

[bludstone]

@MrYousafBajwa so it floods?

[foxylover777]

That 3d model reminded me of the first Resident Evil movie and creeped me out

[EightAlek]

What a retarded idea.

[hahahaspam]

Wouldn't it be easier to scan in all the books and keep them on a server?

[zan5051]

That is extremely inefficient, and will be far too slow to serve the needs of the people.

a retrieval system consisting of numerous ceiling-mounted crate grabbers would be much more efficient. The crates would likely have to be smaller, but with the cranes mounted on the ceiling, more crates could be retrieved at once.

[cbuma]

..........why not just store the books digitally?

[AxmxZ]

You can't fool me. Cthulhu lives there.

[LFDOG]

Although... as critical as I am of the physical books. I would change my mind if it was steam powered.

[LFDOG]

Has anyone ever thought of just scanning all the books into digital form and then allowing for simultaneous access over a global inter-connected network? We could call them "E-books" and call the inter-connected network the "Internet".

[whoishober]

@LFDOG & to all the other similar comments... "copyrights prevent many full-text volumes from being posted online, leaving a lot of information trapped on paper." from wired's "Robots Retrieve Books in University of Chicago’s New, Futuristic Library"

[PSParama]

@whoishober So let's change copyright laws. Shouldn't we be moving towards a system of copyright that recognizes we are not living in 1920 and respects the rights of the creators? It can be done and needs to be. Is it not in the best interests of everyone involved to allow a creative product to be made as widely available as possible? For knowledge? For the profit of the creator? I'm not suggesting that everyone gets their books free. I'm suggesting we free books from their paper prison!

[PeterinScotland]

Looking at the future of underground storage in an emergency situation, does this library require power to keep it drained?

[mallix2000]

wouldn't google be easier?

[MrDetonator86]

A biblioteca do futuro! Pena que uma biblioteca dessa está para o Brasil, assim como a honestidade está para a política nacional.

[jaiyamjar1]

Very Well!!!

[swhite58]

The cost of digitizing 3.5 million books, many of which will see very limited use, is way more than building a library like this one. The underground mass storage saves a lot of money in building construction and running costs.

[hughtub]

@swhite58 Google has already digitized many books (some of these, no doubt). They had cameras set up w/ suction vacuums to turn pages, should take under 5 minutes if lot of photos/high res, but less for books w/ text & OCR. I'm a critic of this. I'd prefer many large interactive screens w/ Apple coverflow-ish UI, and sell the physical books. Maybe copyright is an issue with digitizing, unfortunately. Either way, the lady at 1:24 doesn't belong in a highly technologicaly advanced society.

[StackCityEntOfficial]

Why not just Google it? :P

[swhite58]

@StackCityEntOfficial Because most of the books won't be found on the net - not even on Google books.

[StackCityEntOfficial]

@swhite58 Notice the ":P" face, I was joking, mate.

[ConcealRise]

When the power fails, things are going to get problematic.

[455804]

@ConcealRise What are you doing in a library when force fail

[menicaji]

@ConcealRise It failed yesterday (at least for the computer chargers)



[b00rk]

-there are 29 people in line, please wait 19 minutes for your book to arrive.

[thezquad]

In this day and age of ipads and kindles we're still building massive systems for storing and retrieving books? I bet you could have spent 1/4 of that money to digitize all those books and have them readily available to everyone and forever smh

[supermatthew222]

@thezquad A book stored in proper conditions can last for hundreds, if not thousands of years with no outside intervention. There is no technology today that will allow us to store large amounts of digital information that will even last 10 years without outside intervention. Hdds that sit for a long time tend to suffer from bit rot. The same is for things like flash drives and CDs. Tapes will hold data for longer but the amount of data they hold is fairly small and they won't last 100 years.

[thezquad]

@supermatthew222 Hence redundant storage; data on the cloud does not sit on one machine and wait till the storage device goes bad. The bigger picture is accessibility by everyone, everywhere and forever.

[supermatthew222]

@thezquad Except that that requires a continuous cash flow to keep all that data accessible. While we would like to believe it would be possible to continually keep this storage running, replacing drives as they go bad. If for some reason that cannot be done then you start to loose data or all of it as drives fail or power is lost for an extended period of time. Disasters happen all the time.

[thezquad]

@supermatthew222 Fair enough but if you convert the present value of the cost of the project as a perpetual annuity at a reasonable interest rate + annual labor + maintenance, you will realize a fairly high annual sum. Compare that cost to dumping everything on a $1.50/Gb cloud for storage and a few cents for bandwidth. Add a software platform to distribute the whole thing also annualized C, are you will see that digitizing is not a bad option.Disasters do happen: fires, robots malfunction.

[supermatthew222]

@thezquad The advantage with this system is power can be cut for a year, 5 years or 50 years, all those books will be fine. Additionally while there may be power and staffing costs, that is much cheaper than to keep all this data "in the cloud"(a term I hate as it is a buzz word that means nothing) as after 5 or 10 years, the cost of electricity to power the server room and hdd replacements will be much higher.

[thezquad]

@supermatthew222 Sorry ran out of space :) Also consider that robots have far more moving parts than hard disks if you go the hard disk route. Over the years storage has become more reliable and cheaper and that is a continuing trend. Several companies are moving books to the cloud because it just makes sense

[dessertraider91]

o_O Brick from The Middle would go crazy here. well...crazier

[LarryCebula]

What could possibly go wrong?

[Southparknscrubs]

omgfacts, anyone? This is awesome!!!

[Skwemo]

How did they do the intro?

[ProNukeBoosters]

@Skwemo It's just basic 3D modelling.

[MexicanAxeMurderer]

But its not importnant!

[SPOREFAN200]

If only they could do this for Gamestop...

[kiwikiwi123]

But will it blend?

[matchbox555]

errrr... why don't they just scan all the books

[victai98]

Amazing gigantic..... hard drive?

[andybmallon]

Wonderful.. but wonder why they don't use RFID as they do in my local library instead of manual scanning.

[qwrites]

@andybmallon I believe it is more difficult and expensive to attach RFID labels to books than barcodes, especially when many of the books going into Mansueto are in storage and have not yet been barcoded (or sometimes even entered into the electronic catalog). Besides, the books in Mansueto aren't expected to circulate as often as most books in a public library, so the speed of RFID isn't necessary.

[samgraves2]

What a waste of money...

[LincMclaren]

OR... WE CAN JUST READ BOOKS ONLINE -_-

I guess this is the solution to all the Bookstores and Libraries shutting down

[JanuaryBlack1996]

@LincMclaren

i prefer an actual book over an eReader. just sayin'

[MisterKuehn]

Uhhh...what you really want is called a "scanner"...just scan your books please, allow me to browse it digitally, and save all that money on storage retrieval. (still, this is a pretty cool system, albeit antiquated)

[Otterwearinggloves]

From the thumbnail I was led to believe that the books would be led around the edge of the library on a conveyor belt.

But this is cool too!

[Hardyman1966]

Oh. My. GAWD! It's like door storage in "Monsters, Inc." :)

[JanuaryBlack1996]

@Hardyman1966

i was JUST about to say that XD

[swhite58]

@Hardyman1966 LoL yes it is :)

[THESILVERNARUTO]

@Hardyman1966 I so thought that too!!!

[AHW214]

Or each student can own an ereader, and can have all of the necessary books downloaded on it...

[foxbearturtlegator]

@AHW214 Ereaders have ergonomic limitations that are particularly obvious when doing research. The worst of these are the inability to flip back and forth between two non-sequential pages, and the lack of page numbers for citations. These are solvable problems, but it needs time to evolve to something as intuitive as the bound book.

[nycub81]

Maybe this is actually an elegantly disguised "knowledge bunker" in preparation for the 2012 fin du monde. Furthermore, I can only imagine how hot that reading space at ground level will become during the summer months.

What I had envisioned was a space where you would be able to see the robots at work fetching the books. The design possibilities at the threshold between the "forbidden space" of the stacks and the open space of the reading room would be vast.

[dragoron]

@nycub81

There are types of glass and other materials that prevent heating up in halls like that.

[foxbearturtlegator]

I'm impressed and dismayed. Efficient storage, but a loss in serendipitous browsing.

[jspeyton]

@foxbearturtlegator I agree. The technology is impressive, but serendipitous browsing is important even in research libraries.

[tkandme3]

@foxbearturtlegator WHAT A WASTE. CHICAGO IS GHETTO. THEY HAVE NO MONEY FOR JUNK LIKE THIS

[tkandme3]

@foxbearturtlegator WHAT A WASTE. CHICAGO IS GHETTO. THEY HAVE NO MONEY FOR JUNK LIKE THIS

[zzl01]

@foxbearturtlegator Now with mansueto, you can get them immediately. Mansueto is designed to hold 3.5 million volumes. I guess the storage library of UChicago would hold up to 1-1.5 million, so these volumes will be transferred to the new library, and the holdings in the main libraries such as Regenstein would largely be left untouched. So this is not really destroying the browsing experience, for without the library one cannot have immediate access to them either.

[foxbearturtlegator]

@zzl01 If I understand you correctly, only the serial volumes are going into these closed reserves. That's much more understandable. I only wish the video made that clear.

[zzl01]

@foxbearturtlegator Libraries were constructed with a maximum capacity. The excessive holdings (usually past periodicals and journals since main libraries only keep current issues) are usually moved to the storage library off-campus. When you need them you have to make an electronic request and wait a day for them to be retrieved and sent to the campus.

[Lightice1]

@foxbearturtlegator Browsing is for the public libraries. You never find anything from university libraries without some idea what you are looking for, and just browsing randomly probably yields only boring tomes from fields completely outside your interest or comprehension.

[foxbearturtlegator]

@Lightice1Yes, you can't do academic research by shelf-reading a library, but I find a surprising number of useful books through targeted browsing. Knowing the location of one good book gives the location of a shelf of similar books. Most library search systems replicate this by including an option to browse by call number as well, but for me it's more useful to browse through the related books for information.

[Originalsunrunner20]

@foxbearturtlegator They could always setup a virtual shelf.

[kylemac345]

@foxbearturtlegator They should institute a random resource function, similar to Wikipedia's random article function.