RFID Vendor Panel at CLA
At the California Library Association’s Annual Conference a couple of weeks ago, one of the sessions was an RFID vendor panel: "The Vendors Answer the Tough Questions," moderated by Lori Bowen Ayre. It had a major potential for suckage, but Lori is awesome and kept the vendors on task and prevented them from turning the session into one long sales pitch. The panel included representatives from 3M, Integrated Technology Group, Library Automtion Technologies, Tagsys, Bibliotheca, VTLS, Checkpoint, and Libramation–a good group!
Lori has written up a summary of the session on her blog, Mentat, including why the TechLogic rep didn’t partcipate in the panel.
Having been at the session myself, I can safely say that the summary is quite complete. If you’re looking to learn more about RFID, or your library is considering moving to an RFID system, then this summary is a must-read.
December 2nd, 2004 at 12:33 pm
Nice summary, and I like the analysis: Why would anyone get into RFID at this stage?
I especially second the thought because my library is in the midst of converting to and using an RFID system, and so far we’ve discovered: it takes us longer to check in books because the system takes a few seconds to recognize and reset the tags and items have to be done one at a time or you won’t notice when problems arise; the tags may say the item is checked out but it still sets off the gate; and many items that are NOT checked out don’t set off the gate (particularly a problem with CDs and occasionally books for no apparent reason). Plus the tags are expensive.
So far it’s a slower system (and I’m generously accounting for anomalies that should eventually get fixed) that goes off when it shouldn’t and doesn’t go off when it should, AND the cataloging becomes more of a pain because you often need the item right there to change information on the tag, too. (Don’t ask me why it’s set up that way… Stupid stupid stupid.)
It sounds great in theory, but so far the practice has been hideous, and that’s with things that I don’t see getting fixed anytime soon. The fixable things like normal changing-of-system glitches I’m ignoring.