Enormous automated conveyor belts move items around a system of bins, gently tipping bar-coded items into their desired destinations, sorting thousands of items every day, every hour, even. This is how huge library systems handle millions of items per year.
"When the Technology Changes on You" gives an interesting list of situations in which the technology we have adapted to and use suddenly doesn't work like we expect it to. Spotlight on the "Wayback Machine" which allows you to view webpages that no longer exist, and setting up a Dropbox for when Google Docs lets you down.
What if anybody with a cell phone could help the library digitize materials? How long before everything was scanned? Well, people are floating the idea because traditional book scanners are slow, cumbersome and terribly expensive. Technological capabilities for modern smartphones is astounding, and soon there will few things they can't do, and crowd-sourcing the labor could get the project done in a fraction of the time, given the willingness of volunteers.
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