News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Please scan my towel by novaleaf on Friday March 11, 2016 @09:21AM (#11266729)
I'm a frequent library user, and this may be fine for certain types of collections (where you look for very specific books) but is terrible for general use, as you are removing the ability to search by topic.
Re:Please scan my towel by eterm on Friday March 11, 2016 @10:38AM (#11267182)
I guess the idea is that books naturally fall next to other similar books, a kind of "People who read this also read..." system.

I can understand the experiment, the dewey-decimal system doesn't have to be the ultimate in organisation.

Re:Please scan my towel by blacksmith_tb on Friday March 11, 2016 @12:52PM (#11268216)
It could certainly slow searching by topic (since patrons are remixing the books based on whatever way they're using them). It does seem to demand quite a bit of infrastructure, adding RFID scanners to every shelf (and keeping them working). If it truly would allow every book in the collection to be pinpointed in realtime, that would be a plus, many times the catalog can only tell you that the title you're looking for should be on the shelf, not where it has ended up.
Re:Please scan my towel by Laaw on Friday March 11, 2016 @06:17PM (#11270277)
How? One of the search terms could easily be topic...
Re:Please scan my towel by novaleaf on Saturday March 12, 2016 @12:28PM (#11273639)
right, and then you get listed the locations of 20 books on 20 shelves scattered around the library. Extremely fatiguing and time consuming if you want to skim a couple.