Librarians have volumes of work, robots make their job easier

THE great Argentine novelist Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) once expressed his affection for libraries by saying, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

For book lovers, a library may be the closest thing to “paradise,” but for those charged with keeping it in running order, a library can be hellish.

That’s especially the case when it comes to inventories of books. It is tedious work, mostly done by hand. And the constantly changing status of books – available, loaned out or missing – often means it’s hard to keep track of all volumes.

Library patrons frequently grumble about the difficulty of finding books. They are often not where librarians say they should be.

Libraries seldom do inventories because the job can take days or weeks, depending on the size of a collection, and because it drains considerable staff time.

“As a result, most libraries never do inventory checks,” said Li Bing, chief executive officer of Shanghai-based AILIB High-Tech Co.

That was the early inspiration for the 40-something businesswoman to join her friend Chen Yu, now AILIB’s chief technology officer, in founding the company in the Zhangjiang High-Tech Park in 2015.

“We manufacture robots that catalog books in librarians’ stead,” Li told Shanghai Daily.

Her company is one of the few domestic firms making inventory robotics specifically for libraries. Its second-generation product, a robot over 2 meters tall, is designed to scan entire rows of books and upload the information onto a database.

With a capacity to handle 24,000-30,000 books an hour, the robot can inventory a minimum 300,000 volumes during the 10 to 12 hours when a library is closed at night.

In the past, inventory work was done primarily by holding a portable flyswatter-like device and placing it close to the books to read the labels on bindings. Librarians often had to climb ladders to reach volumes on the top shelves.

The lack of efficiency forced many head librarians to think twice about ordering an inventory check, let alone do the task regularly.

Li said the first-generation AILIB product was encumbered by the fact that it had to move along magnetic rails installed on a library floor. The rails were an eyesore and wore out fast.

By comparison, the latest model is guided by laser navigation. Facing bookshelves at a distance of six centimeters, the robot has built-in sensors to detect electronic tags inside books and identify their positions. Then it relays information to a cloud-like service for data storage.

Its working mechanism is typical of the Internet of Things technology widely adopted by consortiums in establishing unmanned factories or by robotics companies in creating ways of communication — “interface,” in their words — between machines.

In the case of AILIB robots, a technology called radio frequency identification is employed, whereby electromagnetic fields are used to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects.

Advanced as it may sound, the system is still an “imperfect” technology, with a margin of error of 5 percent, said Li. However, it is widely applied in a number of user scenarios, including cashier-free stores and other retail outlets.

But Li’s robots become useless if anti-theft tags inside books are torn out. That is the same problem libraries have struggled with for years. Once tags are stripped off, theft goes undetected.

Li seemed undaunted by this problem.

“That’s precisely where our products can make a difference,” she said, with a smile.

She explained that Chinese libraries spend tens of millions of yuan on replenishing collections every year because 10-20 percent of their books are “technically unrecoverable” — a euphemism for books that are never returned.

“Astonishing as it is, the 10-20 percent loss rate is the industry average,” she said.

Since libraries normally do not conduct inventory checks, one can only fathom what the scale of their losses might be.

Li said she thinks library officials need to address the problem because the books are bought with taxpayer money.

Financial losses incurred by individual libraries may not be much, but they amount to a potentially gargantuan waste of money. Li said the government will take heed sooner or later.

Priced at 300,000 yuan (US$43,204) each, AILIB robots inventory books every night, making sure that libraries are updated daily on their stocks and loss rates.

Although the technology currently available does little to recoup losses, it at least provides some clues as to the size of a perennial problem, said Li.

The accountant-turned-entrepreneur disclosed that the company is planning to enrich its product line with a third-generation model — a robot capable of using image recognition rather than physical tags to inventory books.

The innovation will give rise to a new profit model. Instead of selling robots and databases alone, AILIB will be able to charge for every image generated for books.

In a step that will further free librarians from monotonous, uninspired work, she said, work has begun on the design of a robot that automates the process of shelving books.

After residing in Britain for eight years, Li returned to China in 2010 and joined a leading company making intelligent equipment for libraries, such as self-service book check-out machines and book-sorting robots.

The emergence of new gizmos, like the one from AILIB, will aid her quest to complete a “close loop.”

“My intention is to provide smart solutions to build a really unmanned library,” she said.

She chose the library business as a springboard startup not only because it was familiar to her, but also because she was attracted by the opportunity of “a library boom” in China.

With bigger state coffers, the Chinese government is investing large sums to build cultural facilities that enrich cultural life and lift cities’ profiles. A sizeable portion of funds goes to construction of new, posh libraries.

Laws and regulations have been adopted setting specific standards for new libraries. For example, municipal libraries in first-tier cities should have at least 30,000 square meters of floor space.

A shortage of job seekers means that librarians may increasingly need to rely on robotics to relieve their work burden.

“This is the trend,” Li said. “In the future, librarians will take on more responsibilities for external communications.”

To the chagrin of Borges and his adherents, today’s young generation doesn’t show much passion for libraries. Reading itself has been so revolutionized by technology that digital books call into question the very existence of libraries.

Li conceded that the radio frequency identification technology central to the operation of her robots is less sophisticated and eye-catching than, say, the robotics of assisted surgeries. The library market is not as big or lucrative, but her team has leveraged technology to alleviate an industrial pain point.

“Not all startups will grow into unicorns that rival heavyweights like Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent,” said Li. “A more pragmatic goal is to become a giant in a niche market.”

Globally, similar equipment to AILIB’s from Singapore and Japan often costs five or six times as much. Unlike those countries, where commercial application is limited by the size of the market, China’s market is immense, comprising not just public libraries, but also private libraries, school libraries and archives.

Li said AILIB also supplies law firms and courts with robots to catalog their files. Another possible application is bank vaults, where robots are more trustworthy than humans. Li said one would have to pull many strings for that to happen.

The market, she estimates, is worth 10 billion yuan.

She said too many market leaders are fixated on expanding sales channels at the expense of investing in technological upgrades.

“Some of them are now buying our robots to supply their customers,” Li proudly claimed to Shanghai Daily.

To be sure, technological prowess doesn’t guarantee commercial success. Li acknowledged that her company, comprised mainly of engineers and geeks, is inherently weak in sales and marketing.

She has compensated for that shortcoming with personal hard work. Over the past year, she successfully talked scores of major public libraries in Zhejiang Province into using AILIB robots for trial runs. Dozens have expressed a willingness to purchase.

“Zhejiang is rich, and people there take culture seriously,” said Li. “That gave us an opportunity.”

The next step is to sell robots to the entire Yangtze River Delta region and then to the rest of the country. To date, AILIB products can be found in Shanghai’s Hongkou District Public Library as well as a few institutions in neighboring Jiangsu Province.

Compared with a German-made smart bookshelf system costing in the millions, Li said she believes her equipment offers a cost-effective alternative.

But she is savvy and prepared to delay forays into overseas markets for “two to three years,” until the technology is mature enough to compete abroad.