The Future is Now?

NYPL's laserized sorter in action

By: Macy Halford

I like the incongruity of two New York Public Library-related write-ups that were brought to my attention today. The first is a wonderfully observed blog post by Jamie Niehof, who is interning with the library’s Correctional Services Program, on Rikers Island. She describes how prisoners check out reading material, what they like:

"We stood outside the iron door to the house with our cart and had two prisoners come out at one time, check off their returned book, and pick out a new one. Each prisoner is allowed one book and one magazine. The most popular books are by far James Patterson’s novels, so popular in fact that we have to lock them up after book service because they tend to disappear. I wonder if James Patterson has any idea. National Geographic is the magazine of choice, and there is an entire box of them to choose from, some as far back as the early 80’s."

But what really caught my eye was this bit:

"Everything is done by hand. The prisoners hand me their picture ID and I copy down their number along with the title of book they chose. Later this will be printed up by one of the NYPL staff members and checked off as books are returned."

Now compare this to the other bit of news I received, in a press release:
The Future is Now: World’s Largest Automated Library Book Sorter Unveiled at Celebration, April 22, 11 a.m.
"Room-Sized, Computerized, Laserized Device is Among the Features at The New York Public Library’s New Library Services Center in Long Island City, Queens

What: Opening of The New York Public Library’s Library Services Center, a new 145,000 square foot facility in Long Island City, Queens, bringing together the departments that acquire, prepare, preserve, and distribute library materials. It features the world’s largest automated sorter of library materials, which sorts 7,500 items an hour, doubling the capacity of materials the Library can process.

This state of the art, four-level facility unifies previously dispersed departments, increasing efficiency in processing and preserving a range of materials. Features include the automated sorter, the Library’s Division of Collections and Circulation Operations; a digital imaging center; manuscripts and archives processing area; conservation labs; and exhibitions workshops."

It’s a wonderful contrast, isn’t it? They might as well belong to different universes, Rikers Island and the Library Services Center, time moves so differently inside them. The one is bound by old laws. You can feel the material weight of the world in Niehof’s sentences: the books, the iron door, the lock, the cards, the enumerated bodies of the prisoners—they come in twos—Niehof’s hand as it copies out the numbers associated with each body. And you can feel the closeness: a single cart, a single box, a single book. It’s all tedium, all lack of space.

At the Library Services Center, on the other hand, the human race has been set free—lazerized, computerized, digitized, etceterized (the tone is wonderfully “World of Tomorrow,” isn’t it?). Time has actually been cut in half, and books flow in and out at the unimaginable rate of seventy-five-hundred an hour (that’s a hundred-and-twenty-five a minute, 2.0833 a second). Everything “previously dispersed” is now one (the opposite could be said of the prison). It might as well be a dream, it’s so light and airy. Except that, when viewed alongside the fact of Rikers, it appears more like a collective delusion. At any rate, the two capture the cultural moment nicely, don’t they?

There’s obviously much more that could be said on the subject, but I’ll end with one of my mother’s favorite aphorisms: You’re only ever as happy as your least happy child.

(Further reading: Kate Taylor’s full review of the new facility, in the Times—there's a video of the sorter in action!)

From: New Yorker