{"id":17407,"date":"2012-04-02T09:23:53","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T05:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=17407"},"modified":"2012-04-02T09:24:14","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T05:24:14","slug":"vending-machines-for-books-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/vending-machines-for-books-a-good-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Vending Machines for Books: A Good Idea?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What\u2019s the best way to draw reluctant readers into books?<\/p>\n

Abu Dhabi\u2019s National Library is trying out a number of different strategies. They\u2019ve got book vouchers for kids who attend the book fair. Writing programs. Reading competitions. And this latest one (left) looks suspiciously like any boxy, glass-fronted machine in which you\u2019d find brightly wrapped, chemically brightened, teeth-rotting delights. This vending machine\u2019s mechanisms work much the same way, although the books aren\u2019t nudged from their perch down to the drop box.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no satisfying\u00a0thunk<\/em>. I suppose it would hurt the books.<\/p>\n

Instead, once a book is selected, it\u2019s pushed into a cradle that lowers it gently down to the reader.<\/p>\n

In a world of e-book-this and app-thing-that, I think this is a wonderful, fun, retro idea \u2013 which will be implemented in several Abu Dhabi malls in the next two months. However, in a couple ways it\u2019s not (yet) particularly practical.<\/p>\n

The main problem is this: Although a variety of different books fill the machine in neatly arranged rows, \u201cwe can take only the first book\u201d in each row, systems librarian Salem Salama explained. He let me and journalist-publisher\u00a0Vinutha Mallya<\/a>\u00a0test out the machine at the National Library booth at the\u00a0Abu Dhabi International Book Fair<\/a>\u00a0last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe requested another model,\u201d Salama said. \u201cThe other model comes with more than 350 books and it will just go with a robotic arm and pick the book for you.\u201d But Salama didn\u2019t know if the request for the new model would be approved.<\/p>\n

Meantime, the existing model was set to be deployed \u201cwithin two months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fair Director Dr. Jumaa al-Qubaisi\u00a0explained that Abu Dhabi was opening up new libraries in malls because that\u2019s where Emiratis and UAE residents are often found. Also, he said, the library management is \u201ctrying to get the teenagers to come to the library.\u201d<\/div>\n

\u201cThis is in addition to the mobile libraries,\u201d al-Qubaisi\u00a0said.<\/p>\n

The book vending machines, which will work with a library card, will go to malls where there are no libraries being built. And \u201ceventually,\u201d Salama said, \u201cwe\u2019ll add a purchasing unit\u201d to the vending machines. This is complicated by the fact, he said, that books are many different prices.<\/p>\n

Al-Qubaisi, who is also deputy director general for the National Library,\u00a0said that he expects around 90 percent of the books in the machines will be in Arabic and around 10 percent in English, a marked difference from bookshops around the Emirates, where a far larger percentage of the books are in foreign languages. He didn\u2019t make any mention of Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Farsi,\u00a0or other languages widely used in the Emirates.<\/p>\n

These sorts of book vending machines are already available in some locations in Saudi Arabia, Salama said. But this will be the first time they\u2019ve been tried out in the Emirates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

M. LYNX-QUALEY: Drinks, gold, now it’s books – Abu Dhabi seems to find endless uses for the vending machine <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":17408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,173,80,482,5,187],"tags":[202,18291,3400,1990,18275,18316,162],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}