SHILLONG: Amid rising concern about how educational institutes will function in pandemic days, if opened in full swing, it becomes pertinent to ask if there will be a mechanism set up to ensure that students are in safe hands and their daily use articles are not exposed to the virus.
So what could ensure that these articles, especially books in libraries, are disinfected? The answer is a book-sanitising composite machine, which was unveiled by the North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU) on Wednesday.
The NEHU Vice-Chancellor, Prof SK Srivastava, inaugurated the first-of-its kind, automatic book-sanitising composite machine, at the Central Library of the University here.
In his address, the VC introduced the idea of christening the product by the acronym ‘ABSCoM’, while also lauding the efforts of the NEHU team for the invention.
On the day, Dr Aseem Sinha, one of the members of the R&D team, presented the overview of the project followed by a live demonstration of the machine by Vinayak Majhi and Ashik K Baruah — other team members.
The machine is automatic and sanitises the reading materials without causing any damage.
Dr FR Sumer, the librarian in-charge of NEHU, stated that a device as such as this was felt necessary about two months ago in handling books and other reading materials while in circulation among students and other users, especially during the post-lockdown situation.
The idea behind inventing this machine is to ensure a corona-free environment in the University library for safe use of the books under circulation.
Training was also imparted to the library staffs on operating the machine.
The machine, sanctioned by the Incubation Centre of the University, has been invented by a team of innovators and product developers from the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Basic Sciences & Social Sciences, NEHU.
The product was ready along with its testing in a short span of nearly two and half months between May and July this year, against all odds.
The indigenous machine has the capacity to sanitise up to odd 150 books in one cycle of about 45 minutes at a cost of 20-30 paise per book.
