Erin Blakemore

Library holdings are only useful if they’re findable. For print collections at least, even recommending the most relevant titles ultimately falls short if they’re not on the right shelf. However, the process of finding out if things have been properly shelved is time-consuming and never ending, as materials are continuously moved even if they don’t circulate outside the building. The task is often handled by support staff, interns, or volunteers, but Singapore’s National Library Board has a new alternative: a library robot, developed by researchers at the infocomm research branch of Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research.

In Los Angeles, anyone can be a star—even a library collection. The story of Lost LA, which draws on a Los Angeles library consortium’s local collections, proves that with the right tools (and a willingness to collaborate), libraries can reach an even wider audience.

Many libraries, archives and museums have in their collections textual artifacts that can no longer be read. Now a multispectral imaging initiative is uncovering value that can’t be detected by the human eye in ways that were previously only available to the largest and most deeply resourced institutions, and without having to take fragile manuscripts off-site.