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My last library visit of the graduate trainee post was to the University of East Anglia University Library in Norwich - although there's plenty more library visits coming up, I'm going to the University of Leicester in September and there's some in my course from October onwards.

First things first, the library did look like a nice place to work and study. It was very light on the ground floor and there were obvious and welcoming reception, enquiry and IT areas. I'm not too fond of the multi-layer concrete labyrinth style of architecture that's employed in the university as a whole, but the library was welcoming, and there was an absolutely lovely computer lab attached - one of the few computer areas I've ever entered that felt light and airy rather than slightly oppressive.

The UEA tour is fairly notorious in my current workplace for having the most technically advanced systems of any the libraries we visit. Their books are RFID tagged and can be issued electronically or returned into a post-slot affair on the outside wall or the inside wall of the library.

As you can see from the picture on the left the books are then seized by a conveyor belt. Then the clever bit happens: the machine reads the RFID tags and sorts the books into bins, one for each floor. Clever. However, I do have my reservations about the system. In fact, these reservations extend across a lot of library technologies which I've seen. Library systems just aren't... well... perfect. I've worked in design research doing my PhD, and a lot of the time in that area you're working with prototypes, or even 'Wizard of Oz' set ups, where apparently working systems are fudged together, and I see some of this spilt over into library technology, where systems require a bit of fiddling to actually work.

I'm sure I'm not the only person to encounter the 'reads your barcode when you put your card in here if you give it a bit of a wiggle sometimes' phenomenon in a number of research and public libraries. And the UEA RFID sorter system suffered from a slightly different problem, poor integration into existing practices. When I first saw this wonderful conveyor belt system I was really impressed, and imagined it zooming books straight up to the floor for shelving (or at least reference) in seconds. But in fact, the system you can see on the right applies - the books are wheeled over to some shelves, and then from there they are put on trolleys and then taken to the correct floor. This leads to a significant delay, which may mean students have to ask enquiry desk staff to check on the shelves in the (locked off) room if they can't find recently returned books (and if they know to ask). This was partly an issue with the size of the room: apparently there just wasn't enough space to put trolleys in the room and easily access their shelves, which would have removed one step from the process, at least.

On one hand, this is kind of disappointing: a system-wide problem of the 'works if you give it a wiggle' school. The other side of this, however is that UEA is not only trying new things but forging ahead into new ground. My traineeship this year has been in a very traditional library, and it's the kind of place that will benefit from the struggles and pioneering attitude of places like UEA in the future. However, the part of me that's worked producing make-shift technologies in a research context just can't help but disapprove when make-shift technologies are sold through commercial channels for real money!

Labels: circulation, library tech, library visits