Sorting room full of dated reports from several dozens of years. First pass: put raports in the bins year by year maintaining sort order in the bins. Binary search used to place new report in the bin. Second pass: put year by year sorted reports in the correct order on the shelfs. I don't remeber the name of the algorithm used and the book from which it come was given to the library.
This insight is courtesy of a sorting algorithm that's optimal for systems with very limited memory but multiple tape systems, if I remember correctly. Also IIRC insertion sort can beat doing the binary sort in situations of 7-20 or so? Much over a dozen, I can't use my fingers of one hand as bookmarks to do, say, three comparisons to find the right place, & I'd rather break it down into more piles.