Libraries have often been associated with dusty bookshelves with confusing Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) systems with cataloguers scurrying in the backrooms to organize books while reference librarians at the front desk busily shushing patrons.
Times have changed, and so have the tools and technology of the library trade. Slowly, libraries are moving to new ways of gathering, organizing, and disseminating books and information. Many libraries are moving towards having radio signal barcodes to each book to better help keep books in order.
Imagine a library in which no book would ever be misplaced or stolen. RFID is a technology that makes it all possible.
What is RFID?
One of these exciting developments is Radio-frequency identification (RFID), which is an automatic identification method, relying on storing and remotely retrieving data using devices called tags and barcodes. Although it may sound new to some people unaware of such technologies, RFID has been in fact used in everyday business and retail settings for quite a number of years already.
Every GAP clothing store is a forest of RFID’s. Imbedded into almost any product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification using radio waves, RFID tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the line of sight of the reader. Large companies and retailers are already managing their supply chains through RFID technologies – from manufacturing to shipping to stocking store shelves, including Gillette, Home Depot, The Gap, Proctor & Gamble, Prada, Target, and Wal-Mart.
Libraries and RFID
Libraries in fact, are not that far behind. In an information world, libraries are far ahead of the game. More than three hundred libraries around the world that have already outfitted their books with RFID tags, including the Santa Clara City Library, the Maricopa County Library in Arizona, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries, the Independence Township library in Michigan and the National University of Singapore Libraries.
In fact, even the Vatican Library's vast collection is getting “chipped.” When the tags embedded in copies of "iRobot" and "War and Peace" pass within eighteen inches of the library's RFID readers, they'll come to life, revealing a unique identification number specific to each individual copy.
RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is claimed to provide cost-effective solutions to many of the key issues facing most libraries:
- annual stock-taking
- rapid checking that books are shelved in the correct area
- searching for specific items using a scanner
- self check-out of items
- self-return of items
- security
- library membership cards
Although libraries are forever tied to physical shelves and spaces, we must not forget that the technology that ties them together do not. Libraries are constantly growing and ever evolving. RFID technologies are but one manifestation of the way libraries are run and organized.
