The New York Public Library Unveils a Cutting-Edge Train That Delivers Books

In ear­ly Octo­ber, The New York Pub­lic Library will unveil a new book deliv­ery sys­tem that fea­tures 24 cars, run­ning on 950-feet of ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal track, mov­ing mil­lions of books through 11 dif­fer­ent lev­els of the library, at a rate of 75 feet per minute. This new $2.6 mil­lion book trans­port sys­tem replaces a clunki­er old one where “box­es of research mate­ri­als were placed on a series of con­vey­or belts.”

Image by Jonathan Blanc/NYPL

Says Matt Knutzen, direc­tor of the Human­i­ties and Social Sci­ences Research Divi­sions with­in the Stephen A. Schwarz­man Build­ing, “This new depend­able and effi­cient sys­tem will ensure a seam­less deliv­ery of research items from our stor­age facil­i­ty to the researchers who need them.”  “Our pri­or­i­ties include pre­serv­ing our mate­ri­als and mak­ing them increas­ing­ly acces­si­ble to the pub­lic in an inspir­ing space for research – our recent stor­age expan­sion, our restora­tion of the Read­ing Room, and the instal­la­tion of this sys­tem are all ele­ments of that work.”

Above, you can watch the new sys­tem at work, chug­ging away, climb­ing to new heights, and deliv­er­ing books to hap­py read­ers.

via Boing­Bo­ing/NYPL

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