What do New Orleans, Seattle and Shenzhen, China have in common? They all have libraries that use RFID technology to track their book inventory. Now we can add Charlotte to that list.
Since late last fall, the Charlotte School of Law library staff have been quietly working to add RFID tags to our collection, beginning in treatises, moving to reference and beyond. Before all is said and done, the entire library collection will be tagged. According to 3M, 2% of libraries in the US use RFID, and 8% worldwide, so we are somewhat of an elite group at this point in time…
What is RFID? In a nutshell, it is a wireless technology that is used to identify things… The tag itself consists of a microchip and a radio antenna. The chip in the tag contains information about the item that it is either attached to or embedded in. The tag transmits that information to the reader using radio signals. A good overview can be found on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID, although this may be a tad too technical for most readers. A less technical description, directed at RFID use in libraries, can be found at http://www.biblio-tech.com/html/rfid.html .
But perhaps a better question is ‘Why do I care?’ Well, these tags will allow us to inventory the collection with the wave of a wand (literally), find mis-shelved books and pull outdated materials, keep our more ‘popular’ materials (i.e. the ones that suspiciously walk away) here at home via the omnipresent security gates, and possibly even allow for self checkout.
Sound interesting? More questions? Want to help? Come find the technical services staff… we’re always around and happy to chat!
1 Comment
April 16, 2009 at 3:46 pm
There is a great e-training course provided by CSCMP about RFID. Talks about the basics, implementation, etc. If anyone has further questions you could check it out http://cscmp.org/events/educational/rfid-web-training.asp. I’ve used it and found it very helpful.