Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 RFID, libraries and the wider world
- 2 RFID and libraries: the background and the basics
- 3 RFID, library applications and the library management system
- 4 Standards and interoperability
- 5 Privacy
- 6 RFID and health and safety
- 7 RFID and library design
- 8 Building a business case for RFID in libraries, and requesting proposals
- 9 Staffing: savings, redeployment or something else?
- 10 Buying a system: evaluating the offers
- 11 Installing RFID: project management
- 12 Making the most of RFID: a case study
- 13 RFID, libraries and the future
- Further information
- References
- Index
- Web Accessibility
1 - RFID, libraries and the wider world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 RFID, libraries and the wider world
- 2 RFID and libraries: the background and the basics
- 3 RFID, library applications and the library management system
- 4 Standards and interoperability
- 5 Privacy
- 6 RFID and health and safety
- 7 RFID and library design
- 8 Building a business case for RFID in libraries, and requesting proposals
- 9 Staffing: savings, redeployment or something else?
- 10 Buying a system: evaluating the offers
- 11 Installing RFID: project management
- 12 Making the most of RFID: a case study
- 13 RFID, libraries and the future
- Further information
- References
- Index
- Web Accessibility
Summary
New to RFID? Curious about how it works? Want to know about RFID in the wider world? This chapter looks at the history and background of RFID technology, and outlines some of its uses in everyday life as well as exploring its main applications in libraries.
Why RFID and libraries?
Few, if any, technologies have had as immediate an impact on libraries as that of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). From a standing start in the mid 1990s to a position where an estimated 300 sites worldwide were home to 120 million tagged items by 2005, RFID has spread rapidly around the world's libraries seemingly with little to slow its progress.
This would be impressive under any circumstances, but it has been achieved against a background in which, even now, most industries still see RFID as an experimental product, whose return on investment is doubtful. The majority of commercial applications remain restricted to limited aspects of supply chain management, with tags used at the consignment or pallet level rather than on individual items.
At the time of writing, the very few commercial organizations operating RFID at item level on any significant scale are still seen very much as pioneers, with the RFID industry still some distance from even beginning to approach critical mass for item-level adoption.
Consequently, the claim in 2004 that ‘libraries are much further along with using RFID in a consumer environment than anybody else’ (Lichtenberg, 2004) might have been surprising, but could easily be justified. The main reasons for this are that, for many library managers:
■ RFID is ideally suited to library applications; the need to keep track of thousands of individual items involved in millions of transactions in the most efficient way possible is only one of many applications to which RFID is very well suited.
■ Additionally, however, RFID has a major advantage over other technologies used in libraries for this purpose: the tag has the ability to combine the functions of a barcode (as a unique item identifier) and a security device (able to indicate that an item is being removed from the library without permission). This by itself would be attractive, but, with the added benefits of the ability to read multiple items and to do this virtually simultaneously without the need for line of sight, RFID clearly has a lot to interest any librarian looking to streamline operations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Making the Most of RFID in Libraries , pp. 1 - 14Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2009