Robocouriers are making millions of books at the National Library of Australia accessible

For more than 100 years, each book published in Australia has been collected by the National Library of Australia. It is quite a task, with the library holding millions of books and more than 28,000 titles from Oxford University Press alone.

This old process has been given a futuristic update with the arrival of four robocouriers (also known as automated guided vehicles (AGV) called ‘Isaac’. The AGVs help librarians by carrying books from the ‘stacks’ where books are held to booklifts which transport the books to the Main Reading Room.

Named after Isaac Newton, the AGVs were introduced in 2015. Since then, they have travelled a total of 2,200km and save librarians about an hour every day.

Oxford University Press Australia Schools Publishing Director Lee Walker visited the library last month to meet an Isaac and learn more about where so many OUP titles published in the past century are held.

“While AI is a critical facet of automating processes and workflows, it was illuminating to see first-hand how the old (we humans!) and the new (autonomous mobile robots) are working together to create more efficient business operations.”

While many of the library’s books are stored offsite in fire-safe, temperature-controlled locations, their rare collections and those books that are commonly requested by readers and researchers are stored onsite in below-ground levels of the library in shelves called stacks.

The library has 259 kilometres of shelving which houses its collection of about 100 million items.

The Isaacs operate autonomously, using sensors and lasers to move around objects. Staff can call them using touch screens.

You can see footage of an Isaac at work on ABC News.

What OUP resources does the National Library of Australia hold?

1. The Library holds over 28,000 titles published by Oxford University Press (including Clarendon Press, an imprint of OUP)
2. There are 26,000 books, of which nearly 4000 are published in Australia (Melbourne).
3. The earliest Australian title is from 1913 Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua : the two versions of 1864 & 1865, preceded by Newman’s and Kingsley’s pamphlets (published London, Melbourne)
4. The earliest overseas title dates from 1763 – The state letters of Henry, Earl of Clarendon, lord lieutentant of Ireland during the reign of K. James the Second : and his lordship’s diary for the years 1687, 1688, 1689 and 1690 : from the originals in the possession of Richard Powney, with an appendix from Archbishop Sancroft’s manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (we hold microfilm copies of some even older manuscripts)
5. The NLA subscribes to, or has purchased, over 1000 online dictionaries.
6. There are 285 journal titles, most have ceased but some still ongoing.
7.       There are 762 music scores. Majority of this collections dates from the 1950s-1960s, but the earliest are To the moon [music] : from five idylls : for the pianoforte : opus 38 / Felix Swinstead and A shepherdess in porcelain [music] : slow minuet for pianoforte / Harold Craxton both copyright 1917.