11 ms·

Librarian builds self-checkout machine. Costs $1500 instead of $23000

122 points by ippisl 17y ago

ippisl 17y ago
I wonder if there's similar opportunities for cost reduction in other self-service kiosks ?
- ggruschow 17y ago
  There's a similar opportunity almost everywhere something is sold at a massive premium to material costs.
bensummers 17y ago
$1500 + 15 to 20 days work. However wonderful librarians are, they don't get paid $1000/day, so it's still a good deal. But not quite as good a deal as the headline suggests.
- patio11 17y ago
  When universities ask us to whip up one of these babies we quote a number much closer to $25k than to $1.5k. One reason is that the fully loaded cost of the cheapest engineer capable of doing this is probably about $10k for a man-month. (I don't know what librarians make in Iowa but if it was less than $8k fully loaded I'm going to be surprised). Also, after you install it you have to support it, and these are not the easiest customers in the world to deal with. (Not the worst, either, but an intermediate engineer answer the phone and walk you through how to clear a print jam -- not that any of our customers would ever call four times in a year about a print jam, mind you, this is totally hypothetical -- is not the cheapest endeavor in the world.)
  - ippisl 17y ago
    It took him 15-20 days of work for one unit. won't it take him much less time for each unit if he would build them in quantity ?
    - khill 17y ago
      I would think the kiosk needs to be integrated into the library's primary catalog software database. If other libraries use different catalog software, he would need to do integration work for those other types of catalog systems. The economies of scale would still apply but it's probably more involved than just churning out kiosks.
      - ippisl 17y ago
        That's a good point. Maybe you know how many different catalog systems re used commonly in libraries?
        bensummers 17y ago
        There are many (20+ main ones), and they're all horrid dinosaurs.
        patio11 17y ago
        Do not insult the dinosaurs by comparing them to library management software.
        eru 17y ago
        OPAC seems to be quite common in Germany. It works reasonably well (from a library user's point of view).
    - patio11 17y ago
      It takes us X% less time to create the 2nd and subsequent units relative to the first, and we charge Y% less money for them. They are certainly not 60/20 but if you're thinking in that general direction you understand custom software development pretty well.
- BCM43 17y ago
  Unless they make more than one.
- rgoddard 17y ago
  But it only cost $1500 extra. His salary is already in the budget. No need to do a fund raiser to pay him. At which point, since that money was going to be spent anyways, the only real cost from his time is the opportunity cost for what else he could have been doing.
  - bensummers 17y ago
    If he had stuff he was doing, then someone else had to do it, and therefore there was a cost. Even if this cost was someone going unpaid overtime. If he is employed to do such work, then his salary should definitely be counted!
    - fefzero 17y ago
      Yes, but then you'd probably have to subtract the amount of time that he would have spent implementing the other type of solution or getting training on how to administer it. The salary doesn't necessarily have to be included; it's a fixed cost.
      - ks 17y ago
        We can also assume that his job in technical support did not use 100% of his time. So some of the costs were already there to begin with.
  - hyperbovine 17y ago
    the only real cost from his time is the opportunity cost for what else he could have been doing Exactly--and since you're bringing economics into picture, the opportunity cost should exactly equal the wages expended on developing this. OP makes a valid point. OTOH if the marginal cost of production is really 1/20th of the next-best solution, then his employer should easily be able to recoup that by rolling out a bunch of these.
    - camccann 17y ago
      Exactly--and since you're bringing economics into picture, the opportunity cost should exactly equal the wages expended on developing this. OP makes a valid point. Not necessarily, if his job includes some degree of "on demand" responsibilities--it said he was a librarian who handles some tech support, so chances are a lot of what he's being paid for is just being there when needed. On a slow day, he'd be there anyway and getting paid the same, so working on something like this is a clear win over, I don't know, dusting shelves or something.
- MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
  Yeah, HN folks should be well aware of this. "I can start a startup for the cost of renting a server...that's like $50/mo!" Oh yeah, there's also the 1000s of hours of your previously free time that also goes in.
- teeja 17y ago
  He said: "I like to mess around with things like that on my own." He donated his expertise to the community, and had a good time. I'm having a hard time finding the downside.
jdietrich 17y ago
It's not so much a cost saving, more an indication that this particular librarian is underemployed. With those skills, he shouldn't be stamping books and clearing print jams.
- mbrubeck 17y ago
  The people you see stamping books are probably clerks or pages. "Librarian" is a professional job that requires at least a master's degree. Librarians these days increasingly have degrees in "information science" which includes a wide variety of technologies from books to the internet. The librarian in this news story "handles technical support for the library." Apparently this isn't just clearing print jams, either: "I had done some Web-application development for the library..."
  - jdietrich 17y ago
    My mistake - I must have made a wrongful assumption based on practice in the UK. While public librarians in Britain are also expected to have a postgraduate qualification, that doesn't mean very much here and librarians aren't particularly well paid unless they are heads of service. An experienced librarian would expect to earn about half what an experienced software developer or systems administrator would - indeed, they would be fortunate to earn more than a junior developer on their first year in the job. As an indication of their status here, a study published by the British Psychological Society in 2006 suggested that librarians are amongst the most stressed and frustrated workers. In the study, librarians themselves described feelings of severe boredom, a lack of control over their careers and insufficient opportunities to exercise their skills. As a heavy library user myself, this news story gelled strongly with the perception I have of librarians - intelligent people with very little to do, shuffling about the place with the demeanour of a lackadaisical hound, looking for something to puncture their tedious routine.
    - mbrubeck 17y ago
      Yeah, maybe it's different here in the U.S. Last month, Librarian ranked #46 in a "Best Jobs" list at the Wall Street Journal - with "stress" as one of the criteria. (Software Engineer was #2!) http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS2010_20100105.html http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS... You do make a good distinction between public libraries and others (school libraries, medical/law/corporate libraries). But even there, you might not have the full picture. The people who spend most of their time at the circulation desk in most libraries are not librarians. Meanwhile, librarians may spend most of their time doing jobs you don't see, like collection development (finding, selecting, and acquiring new which books or other resources).
asmithmd1 17y ago
Typical engineer, they just want to solve problems and don't care about making money. Why did he tell them the fixed machine cost? He could have started a nice side business providings these kiosks for $5k or $10k. I know O'Reilly preaches creating more value than you capture but shouldn't he captutre some value?
- nfnaaron 17y ago
  "shouldn't he captutre some value?" I think he captured a pile of spiritual value.
  - asmithmd1 17y ago
    I assume you are not joking. He could have done more "good" by investing $1500 of his own money and given them the first one for free. Each one after that is - say - $7500. The library would be thrilled with the free one AND the dramatically lower cost. Say the library from the next town over wants one now, what should he tell them? They know it only costs $1500 and will balk at paying more yet he won't want to build them for free.
    - jodrellblank 17y ago
      "The library would be thrilled with the free one AND the dramatically lower cost" The library would be thrilled with the free one, and tell him his company isn't an approved supplier, sorry, but if he can offer regular maintenance contracts and guarantee spares for the life of the contract, and a service level agreement, and electrical safety certification and accessibility guideline approval then they'd be happy to submit his company to the review board... Also, he's currently in a job where he can take 15-20 days to tinker with something and people approve of it. In your situation he'd be in a job where he was continually obliged to work on maintenance and support of dozens of hacked together kiosks.
      - ippisl 17y ago
        Maybe a software sales model would be a better fit here. You give away the instructions on what hardware they need , and how to connect it ,and then you sell an integrated software that handles this. This is also makes far easier for the library to try this because you can offer trial period/monthly software subscription , and they could reuse some hardware they have their(pc,display) , to make the initial investment relatively small, so you need a lot less bureaucratic approvals.
megamark16 17y ago
"He got it up and running quickly, too. He's a hero around here; talk about job security." He'll have job security because he sounds like the type of guy who looks for ways to make improvements wherever he's at, which is a trait that a large part of the workforce seems to be missing. I'd hire this guy (and guys like him) and find a place for him in my company (if I had a company) because they look for ways to make things better, faster, cheaper, without it being in their job description.
- Hubbert 17y ago
  The spirit of volunteerism and innovation that you admire is impractical when managers define the employee's primary responsibilities in a way that requires unpaid overtime every week.
  - megamark16 17y ago
    You're absolutely right, I've even heard of people receiving negative performance reviews because they spent a little unauthorized time at work creating something that improved the productivity of the entire staff by a measurable dollar amount. There will always be companies that shoot themselves in the foot.
- jodrellblank 17y ago
  He'll have job security because he hacked together a public use kiosk which everyone loves and nobody else can support.
  - megamark16 17y ago
    My real point wasn't necessarily that he'll have job security at the library, which of course he will, but that this type of self motivated, driven, and creative person should have little trouble finding work with any company that is able to recognize the worth of those traits.
    - ryanelkins 17y ago
rgrieselhuber 17y ago
Anyone know what software, tools he used? I'm sure other libraries would like to do the same.
BjornW 17y ago
Wonderful story and it made my day. I really like it when people are fixing problems and go above and beyond their job description.
Groxx 17y ago
The library in Appleton had a decent self-checkout several years ago, and it was ridiculously simple: a fixed barcode scanner, de-magnetizing bar, card swipe, and an off-the-shelf computer + monitor. Likely cost a lot more than $1500, but there's no reason it wouldn't have been fairly cheap, and I've never heard of anyone having trouble with it. It also only took up about 3 square feet of ground space. Grocery store checkouts need to learn something from that design. Swipe card, slide books through & listen for the beep, and walk away. Some are that simple, but most have you click through several layers of buttons just to frickin' pay.

122 points by ippisl 17y ago

ippisl 17y ago

I wonder if there's similar opportunities for cost reduction in other self-service kiosks ?

ggruschow 17y ago
There's a similar opportunity almost everywhere something is sold at a massive premium to material costs.

bensummers 17y ago

$1500 + 15 to 20 days work. However wonderful librarians are, they don't get paid $1000/day, so it's still a good deal. But not quite as good a deal as the headline suggests.

patio11 17y ago
When universities ask us to whip up one of these babies we quote a number much closer to $25k than to $1.5k. One reason is that the fully loaded cost of the cheapest engineer capable of doing this is probably about $10k for a man-month. (I don't know what librarians make in Iowa but if it was less than $8k fully loaded I'm going to be surprised). Also, after you install it you have to support it, and these are not the easiest customers in the world to deal with. (Not the worst, either, but an intermediate engineer answer the phone and walk you through how to clear a print jam -- not that any of our customers would ever call four times in a year about a print jam, mind you, this is totally hypothetical -- is not the cheapest endeavor in the world.)
- ippisl 17y ago
  It took him 15-20 days of work for one unit. won't it take him much less time for each unit if he would build them in quantity ?
  - khill 17y ago
    I would think the kiosk needs to be integrated into the library's primary catalog software database. If other libraries use different catalog software, he would need to do integration work for those other types of catalog systems. The economies of scale would still apply but it's probably more involved than just churning out kiosks.
    - ippisl 17y ago
      That's a good point. Maybe you know how many different catalog systems re used commonly in libraries?
      - bensummers 17y ago
        There are many (20+ main ones), and they're all horrid dinosaurs.
        patio11 17y ago
        Do not insult the dinosaurs by comparing them to library management software.
        eru 17y ago
        OPAC seems to be quite common in Germany. It works reasonably well (from a library user's point of view).
  - patio11 17y ago
    It takes us X% less time to create the 2nd and subsequent units relative to the first, and we charge Y% less money for them. They are certainly not 60/20 but if you're thinking in that general direction you understand custom software development pretty well.
BCM43 17y ago
Unless they make more than one.
rgoddard 17y ago
But it only cost $1500 extra. His salary is already in the budget. No need to do a fund raiser to pay him. At which point, since that money was going to be spent anyways, the only real cost from his time is the opportunity cost for what else he could have been doing.
- bensummers 17y ago
  If he had stuff he was doing, then someone else had to do it, and therefore there was a cost. Even if this cost was someone going unpaid overtime. If he is employed to do such work, then his salary should definitely be counted!
  - fefzero 17y ago
    Yes, but then you'd probably have to subtract the amount of time that he would have spent implementing the other type of solution or getting training on how to administer it. The salary doesn't necessarily have to be included; it's a fixed cost.
    - ks 17y ago
      We can also assume that his job in technical support did not use 100% of his time. So some of the costs were already there to begin with.
- hyperbovine 17y ago
  the only real cost from his time is the opportunity cost for what else he could have been doing Exactly--and since you're bringing economics into picture, the opportunity cost should exactly equal the wages expended on developing this. OP makes a valid point. OTOH if the marginal cost of production is really 1/20th of the next-best solution, then his employer should easily be able to recoup that by rolling out a bunch of these.
  - camccann 17y ago
    Exactly--and since you're bringing economics into picture, the opportunity cost should exactly equal the wages expended on developing this. OP makes a valid point. Not necessarily, if his job includes some degree of "on demand" responsibilities--it said he was a librarian who handles some tech support, so chances are a lot of what he's being paid for is just being there when needed. On a slow day, he'd be there anyway and getting paid the same, so working on something like this is a clear win over, I don't know, dusting shelves or something.
MicahWedemeyer 17y ago
Yeah, HN folks should be well aware of this. "I can start a startup for the cost of renting a server...that's like $50/mo!" Oh yeah, there's also the 1000s of hours of your previously free time that also goes in.
teeja 17y ago
He said: "I like to mess around with things like that on my own." He donated his expertise to the community, and had a good time. I'm having a hard time finding the downside.

jdietrich 17y ago

It's not so much a cost saving, more an indication that this particular librarian is underemployed. With those skills, he shouldn't be stamping books and clearing print jams.

mbrubeck 17y ago
The people you see stamping books are probably clerks or pages. "Librarian" is a professional job that requires at least a master's degree. Librarians these days increasingly have degrees in "information science" which includes a wide variety of technologies from books to the internet. The librarian in this news story "handles technical support for the library." Apparently this isn't just clearing print jams, either: "I had done some Web-application development for the library..."
- jdietrich 17y ago
  My mistake - I must have made a wrongful assumption based on practice in the UK. While public librarians in Britain are also expected to have a postgraduate qualification, that doesn't mean very much here and librarians aren't particularly well paid unless they are heads of service. An experienced librarian would expect to earn about half what an experienced software developer or systems administrator would - indeed, they would be fortunate to earn more than a junior developer on their first year in the job. As an indication of their status here, a study published by the British Psychological Society in 2006 suggested that librarians are amongst the most stressed and frustrated workers. In the study, librarians themselves described feelings of severe boredom, a lack of control over their careers and insufficient opportunities to exercise their skills. As a heavy library user myself, this news story gelled strongly with the perception I have of librarians - intelligent people with very little to do, shuffling about the place with the demeanour of a lackadaisical hound, looking for something to puncture their tedious routine.
  - mbrubeck 17y ago
    Yeah, maybe it's different here in the U.S. Last month, Librarian ranked #46 in a "Best Jobs" list at the Wall Street Journal - with "stress" as one of the criteria. (Software Engineer was #2!) http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS2010_20100105.html http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS... You do make a good distinction between public libraries and others (school libraries, medical/law/corporate libraries). But even there, you might not have the full picture. The people who spend most of their time at the circulation desk in most libraries are not librarians. Meanwhile, librarians may spend most of their time doing jobs you don't see, like collection development (finding, selecting, and acquiring new which books or other resources).

asmithmd1 17y ago

Typical engineer, they just want to solve problems and don't care about making money. Why did he tell them the fixed machine cost? He could have started a nice side business providings these kiosks for $5k or $10k. I know O'Reilly preaches creating more value than you capture but shouldn't he captutre some value?

nfnaaron 17y ago
"shouldn't he captutre some value?" I think he captured a pile of spiritual value.
- asmithmd1 17y ago
  I assume you are not joking. He could have done more "good" by investing $1500 of his own money and given them the first one for free. Each one after that is - say - $7500. The library would be thrilled with the free one AND the dramatically lower cost. Say the library from the next town over wants one now, what should he tell them? They know it only costs $1500 and will balk at paying more yet he won't want to build them for free.
  - jodrellblank 17y ago
    "The library would be thrilled with the free one AND the dramatically lower cost" The library would be thrilled with the free one, and tell him his company isn't an approved supplier, sorry, but if he can offer regular maintenance contracts and guarantee spares for the life of the contract, and a service level agreement, and electrical safety certification and accessibility guideline approval then they'd be happy to submit his company to the review board... Also, he's currently in a job where he can take 15-20 days to tinker with something and people approve of it. In your situation he'd be in a job where he was continually obliged to work on maintenance and support of dozens of hacked together kiosks.
    - ippisl 17y ago
      Maybe a software sales model would be a better fit here. You give away the instructions on what hardware they need , and how to connect it ,and then you sell an integrated software that handles this. This is also makes far easier for the library to try this because you can offer trial period/monthly software subscription , and they could reuse some hardware they have their(pc,display) , to make the initial investment relatively small, so you need a lot less bureaucratic approvals.

megamark16 17y ago

"He got it up and running quickly, too. He's a hero around here; talk about job security." He'll have job security because he sounds like the type of guy who looks for ways to make improvements wherever he's at, which is a trait that a large part of the workforce seems to be missing. I'd hire this guy (and guys like him) and find a place for him in my company (if I had a company) because they look for ways to make things better, faster, cheaper, without it being in their job description.

Hubbert 17y ago
The spirit of volunteerism and innovation that you admire is impractical when managers define the employee's primary responsibilities in a way that requires unpaid overtime every week.
- megamark16 17y ago
  You're absolutely right, I've even heard of people receiving negative performance reviews because they spent a little unauthorized time at work creating something that improved the productivity of the entire staff by a measurable dollar amount. There will always be companies that shoot themselves in the foot.
jodrellblank 17y ago
He'll have job security because he hacked together a public use kiosk which everyone loves and nobody else can support.
- megamark16 17y ago
  My real point wasn't necessarily that he'll have job security at the library, which of course he will, but that this type of self motivated, driven, and creative person should have little trouble finding work with any company that is able to recognize the worth of those traits.
  - ryanelkins 17y ago

rgrieselhuber 17y ago

Anyone know what software, tools he used? I'm sure other libraries would like to do the same.

BjornW 17y ago

Wonderful story and it made my day. I really like it when people are fixing problems and go above and beyond their job description.

Groxx 17y ago

The library in Appleton had a decent self-checkout several years ago, and it was ridiculously simple: a fixed barcode scanner, de-magnetizing bar, card swipe, and an off-the-shelf computer + monitor. Likely cost a lot more than $1500, but there's no reason it wouldn't have been fairly cheap, and I've never heard of anyone having trouble with it. It also only took up about 3 square feet of ground space. Grocery store checkouts need to learn something from that design. Swipe card, slide books through & listen for the beep, and walk away. Some are that simple, but most have you click through several layers of buttons just to frickin' pay.