Recently, a new book machine came in the market that has many people talking. I don’t know if it will be all that revolutionary, but it is interesting to think about. Described as the Espresso Book Machine, this device prints and binds a book in five minutes when a user chooses a title from a database of more than 500,000 titles. Thus far, it appears to be only available in London’s bookstores (yet another reason to agree that the British capital is a Mecca for readers!). Essentially, they are trying to eliminate the problem whereby books go out of stock. As far as that goes, it strikes me as a good idea. I’ve been wondering if something like this could have some application to Inter-Library Loan situations. With a few exceptions (e.g. rare books scholarship or bibliographical study), it strikes me as a good solution. After all, the fourth law of library science as expounded by S. R. Ranganathan is, “Save the time of the User.” If we can make material available in five minutes instead of five weeks, then we should explore doing that.
If you’re curious to see what it looks like, then you are in luck. My girlfriend, Carolyn, is presently in London conducting research for her PhD in History and she took a break from the archives to take a few photos for me – thanks! There are four in total here. The panel proclaiming “A New Chapter in Print” is bit grand, but I like the idea of it.
There are three images below here, which are all fairly high resolution.
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