Students and faculty in the University of Chicago are fortunate to have the world’s most advanced library under their feet. See, that’s the big deal with the domed Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. It’s a cavernous reading room crowned upon an enormous database of 3.5 million books. That’s BOOKS. Printed matter. 3.5 million of them. Journals, documents, and anything else bound between two covers.
Of course, such a peculiar state of affairs calls for the innovation part. Indeed, the Mansueto Library is a giant innovation of not just library book-keeping, but robotics as well. Beneath the library floor are thousands upon thousands of metal boxes filled with reading material organized and retrieved by robotic arms. Like most libraries, students and researchers type in their desired reading material at a counter/lending desk; they can expect to have it at hand within five minutes.
The Mansueto Library is already open and has garnered no small amount of acclaim as a forward looking approach to an age old institution. It would e great if a couple of similar establishments of much larger proportions were built in each continent, open to the public. (So much for Google.) Hello, China?
Source Singularity Hub
Filed Under: Design News, Technology News