Automated Library: How the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library Work

Aboveground, the new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago is a sunlit dome of glass and steel, but the library's key innovation is its automated storage and retrieval system, housed in a larger underground space that extends 50 feet underground and can hold the equivalent of 3.5 million volumes. This high-density storage space takes inspiration from commercial inventory techniques, applying them to the needs of one of the world's great research libraries. The system keeps books, journals, and special holdings in optimal preservation conditions and can retrieve them within minutes for library users. It will allow the University of Chicago to keep book collections in a central location, readily available for scholars in many fields. Here's how it works. First, library staff members load items into bins based on size, using barcodes that allow the system to track each item's location. Each bin holds about 100 books or journal volumes. In all, the system contains 24,000 bins, kept in 12 columns of metal racks that extend the full length of a library. Library users discover and request items using the online catalog. Any user with a computer and an internet connection can make a request, from anywhere on campus or from the other side of the world. The request activates Mansueto's underground storage and retrieval system. It uses five mechanized cranes, which are 50 feet tall and custom-designed to move among the ten columns. One of the cranes automatically retrieves the bin with a requested item and lifts it to the ground floor circulation service center. After a staff member retrieves and scans the item, the system sends an email to the user that requested it, indicating that the item is ready for pickup and will be held for seven days. The whole process is designed to take less than five minutes, so users who make a request from the Central Regenstein Library are likely to find a book waiting for them by the time they've walked across the bridge to Mansueto. When the library user returns a book, a staff member scans it into the automated storage and retrieval software, which summons the appropriate bin. After the staff member has placed the book in the bin and completed the transaction, the system is prepared to retrieve it again upon request.