Taipei Library Opens With No Staff; Books Flying Off the Shelves

The first "staff-less" library located at a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) station opened yesterday evening, offering about 15,000 books targeted at teenagers and MRT commuters.

That's the opening line from this Taipei Times story just yesterday by Mo Yan-chih. And so how do they do this and how is this experiment going?

The staff-less computer-operated library employs a radio frequency identification (RFID) system and a self check-in and check-outsystem, allowing residents to enter the library by inserting a RFID library card, scan the book and take a receipt from the computer, and return the book by dropping it off in a library return box.

Taipei Public Library chief Tseng Shu-hsian... said the first staff-less library had attracted 9,000 library card applications and over 100,000 residents since it started operating. The success of the first staff-less library prompted the library to open a second one.