I am seeking a labor- and $-efficient way to transfer the data from
over 5,000 recorded data CDs to unix-attached RAID.

I hope for something like a firewire or USB2 external CD reader with a
stack hopper for hundreds of CDs, and scriptable means for moving to
the next CD in the stack. The hardware appears to exist in the domain
of CD/DVD duplicators. The requirement is to be able to process at
least 100 CDs after each human intervention.

A WinXP solution would be acceptable, but a Mac OS-X or Linux
environment is preferred.

A responsive answer will provide one or more URLs to either:

a) A reputable service bureau that will transfer data CDs to loaner or
customer-supplied external hard drives in HFS+ or NTFS or a
Linux-readable filesystem, pulling them from binders and replacing
them, at a cost of less than one dollar a CD in quantity 5,000, or

b) A CD reader with robotic disk stacker that:
  1) can be loaded with a stack of at least 100 CDs in less than a minute,
  2) connects by firewire or USB or ethernet to a Mac or Lintel or WinXP box,
  3) is recognizable by the host as a CD drive that can mount an
ISO9660 CD for reading,
  4) can be caused to step to the next CD in the stack by a defined
shell-scriptable command (this could even involve running a
vendor-supplied program to issue the "next disk" command to the
hardware, but must be accomplished without user intervention),
  5) is safe in its handling of the CDs, such that the expectation
value of a CD being damaged by the machine is less than 1 in 10,000
(Note: I don't expect any low-priced manufacturer to make any
numerical promises. I will be satisfied with a disk-handling mechanism
that appears reasonably safe in my engineering judgement.)
  6) costs less than $4,000, including any vendor charges for software,
  7) is available with a lead time of less than three months.

Element (4) of alternative (b) above may be the hardest thing to
establish. A responsive answer will make it clear, e.g. by reference
to equipment manual and page number, that the proposed solution
satisfies this requirement.

Yes, what you have described is available but is not available as a
turn key solution for $4,000

I'm not to familiar with US wages (I asume you are in the US)

But it might be easier / cheaper to get a temp employee, sit him
behind a set of PC's and let him do the work.

Just thinking out loud...