Productivity at the Maison de l'Economie library

Economic researchers finally have something to smile about. After years of having their source material spread across the Pantheon and Tolbiac libraries and the various laboratories of the CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), the Maison de l'Economie now provides an impressive collection of specialised works under one roof.

From unemployment and currency to development and industrial economics, you only have to take a stroll along the brand new shelves at the library, housed at 106-112 Boulevard de l'Hopital in Paris, to realise that there is plenty here to make budding economists very happy indeed. The library at the Maison de l'Economie has gathered together the venerable collection from the Bibliotheque d'Economie et de Statistique (Library of Economics and Statistics), whose first works date as far back as 1850, with over 90,000 works and reviews from various documentation centres.

In terms of security, the creation of the Maison de l'Economie provided much food for thought: "We needed to find a technology that was easy to apply to the various collections — so we opted for 3M's electromagnetic system, already in use at the Sorbonne university library," explains the documentation manager.

After an initial phase when security strips were inserted in 15,000 works by hand, the library decided to switch to semi-automatic strip insertion using the 3M 611 Tattle-Tape(TM) application system.

Frederic, the warehouseman, and Yohann, a post-graduate student employed part-time by the library, tackled the new task. There is not a shadow of a doubt in their minds — automation can sometimes have a good side!

"Thanks to the Tattle-Tape automatic tape application system, leased from 3M, we processed almost 3,000 reviews in two days. We can go twice as fast as if we were doing it by hand," is the unequivocal message from both. The system is so much more efficient that they can now share the various tasks efficiently: while one equips the books, the other puts them away. Which means that the works are only out of circulation for a very short time.