RFID – Changing libraries for good?

Following the 2011 merger of the three companies that now make up the Bibliotheca group , a new product portfolio was – in the words of their latest press release – “always to be a exciting proposition for the Group”, and indeed for their clients.

Rather than simplifying their offer Bibliotheca have opted to make products previously sold in each of its main markets available globally creating – as they say – “a breadth of choice not previously seen within the library market.”

Choice is good of course, though sometimes confusing and even within their flagship self-service (smartserve™) collection there is now a choice of five distinct options ranging from built-in and tabletop through to complete self-contained kiosks with cash and card payment. Bibliotheca appear to have opted for Intellident’s “smart” branding for the entire range of self-service kiosks as well as for their smartadmin™ central management platform – an enterprise-wide software application that monitors and manages the various components that make up their RFID library management solution.

This is a relatively new area of development in RFID deployment. TagSYS offered a similar product to OEMs of their RFID hardware some time ago and other companies – have not been slow in responding to the challenge.

Of course what clients will really want to know is whether they also have a choice of software solutions for the devices themselves. The press release refers to the hardware being supported by

‘a new range of software products, which will provide a consistent experience for users whilst offering innovative features and options – all of which can be modified, controlled and maintained by the Groups’ .

Which suggests that the different user experiences enjoyed by Bibliotheca clients in the UK, Australia, Europe and North America may also be offered globally. More choice – and more decisions - for librarians to make.

Bibliotheca also stress their intention to continue to supply both barcode-driven and RFID solutions as well as providing continuing support for Electro-Magnetic (EM) security. All of which may suggest that the group remains firmly focused on its legacy solutions – however we have been promised exciting news about new products and services so judgement is reserved on that point.

It’s refreshing to see a company emerge from the inevitable turmoil that follows major mergers (I’ve been through a few myself!) so speedily and with a clear product plan.

Bibliotheca are the current leaders in the International Library RFID survey being carried out by consultants in the USA, UK and Australia. For more details of that visit,

http://www.mickfortune.com/RFID2012/2012-library-rfid-use-survey

For more information about Bibliotheca’s new product range contact their local sales office or approved Bibliotheca distributor -or wait for a new customer-focussed website to be launched later this quarter with full specifications and details of every product in the range.

For more information on the press release contact:
Claudia Shekle, Bibliotheca
Email claudia.shekle@bibliotheca-rfid.com

For the last 10 days I have been watching responses to this year’s library RFID survey rolling in (328 as I write this) and been dipping into some of the replies and suggestions that librarians from around the world have been making about the potential for the technology over the coming year.

I guess January is the right month for speculation as I noticed Marshall had also been doing some crystal ball gazing. One paragraph in particular caught my eye:

“I anticipate some experimental use of Near Field Communications (NFC), especially in the area of patron self-service, though not necessarily new production-level implementations.  While QR codes continue to spark interest, I do not anticipate that they will enter the mainstream of library automation in any way that will challenge existing identification technologies such as barcodes or RFID tags.  I do anticipate steady movement in the implementation of RFID-based technologies in libraries, though not necessarily any new breakthrough products. “

Everyone it seems agrees that RFID is going places – but there’s very little agreement about where that might be… More »

This morning’s inbox contained an interesting document form Australia. It seems that there are moves afoot to standardise on a National Data Model along very similar lines to that recommended by the BIC standards group back in 2009 and comments are being sought from suppliers few before publication. There are some minor differences but overall the emphasis is now firmly on a national model based on ISO 28560 1 & 2 – the same recommendation as is being recommended by America’s NISO agency.

Even more reassuring is the fact that the early enthusiasm for UHF based solutions seems to have waned a little. With UHF unable to support a data standard the new Australian model will require everyone to use HF tags.

It would be great if standards agencies in these three countries could work together on issues like these. Since all three are still largely dependent on a very similar group of LMS/ILS vendors to manage the back end of virtually every RFID solution on the market we could, as a group, exert some real pressure to support communications protocols that can carry the data payload needed to populate some of the optional fields that the Australian document suggests could be useful. In the UK we took a more pragmatic approach and limited our recommendations to data elements that could actually be used right away, taking the view that the other elements are very well defined in the ISO guidance already – should an LMS/ILS vendor feel moved to use them.

I had an interesting exchange with the CEO of a US RFID vendor along these lines only last week. As more and more RFID vendors recognise the true potential of the technology I can foresee a time when frustration at the lack of support by LMS/ILS systems for RFID data elements will drive a deeper wedge between the two – but I always hope for co-operation rather than confrontation.

The 2012 Library RFID Survey has now been running for exactly a week and 272 replies have been received so far – with Australian libraries being the most prolific – at 103. UK libraries follow closely behind on 101, with US libraries trailing them both by some distance – at only 16. This is may be a reflection of the survey’s active promotion by professional bodies such as CILIP and ALIA, and the interest shown on Twitter by UK and Australian librarians.

We’re still hoping that the ALA might be persuaded to take an interest. More »

3M announced the publication of their SIP 3.0 protocol this afternoon. The document is published in two parts. Part One may be downloaded here with part two here.

The protocol brings both new order and new functionality to self-service circulation and addresses many of the issues caused by SIP’s previous dependence on the often unstructured ‘extensions’ used by many third parties in communication between management systems (ILS or LMS) and third party applications.

3M chose to focus exclusively on circulation when designing SIP 3.0 – which may prove to be an opportunity missed as far as RFID is concerned. BIC’s  protocol published in 2011 has been designed to accommodate a much broader range of interactions with both management systems (ILS/LMS) and other third party applications, and as RFID develops its capabilities far beyond circulation librarians might see SIP 3.0 as being too limited in its thinking.

With ISO 28560 beginning to gain traction in the USA, Australia and the UK it is disappointing to note that SIP 3.0 has largely ignored the potential that this new data standard offers to RFID users.

The market will no doubt decide whether 3M’s domination of  global library RFID will continue.

This year’s RFID conference in London was a little different to those of previous years. Reflecting both the growing diversity of RFID provision and the need for more interoperability between services a larger number of delegates than in 2010 heard presentations on a wider range of subjects than ever before.

Martin Palmer had agreed to chair the event – a daunting task with such a crowded programme, and first up was… Mick Fortune! I spoke about the “Challenges and Opportunities” facing us in 2012. (my slides are available here). More »

Following last week’s decision to take the site down for a long overdue overhaul I received a number of appeals from readers who were in the process of writing dissertations, preparing business cases or writing RFPs to restore it as soon as possible.

The solution I have found is to strip out most of the content that was in urgent demand and move it to a new site where I can add more information in the future. You are very welcome to go and visit – but please come back if you want to keep up with news, opinion and gossip (and the odd rant).

I hope you will find the changes helpful.

For the last few years I have been working to improve the use of RFID in libraries. Much of that effort has been going into establishing the standards necessary for RFID to play a fuller part in delivering library services than it does at the moment – establishing a UK data model, and helping to direct the creation of a new communication protocol for linking RFID and LMS solutions. More »

November 8^th sees the Annual CILIP RFID conference take place in London. In previous years the conference has centred around two main areas of interest; using RFID to deliver self-service, and the need for data standards throughout the industry.

But with the publication of the international data standard for RFID in libraries earlier in the year the stage is now set for the market to move on. This year’s conference will not only feature products and ideas that will utilise the new standard’s added capabilities – but will also begin to address the new challenges and opportunities facing systems integrators and application developers that NFC and smartcard technologies (also forms of RFID) bring to the library market. More »

This year’s RFID in Libraries Conference will be a bit different.

In previous years we have spent a great deal of time discussing the issues that have held the technology back from delivering its full potential for libraries. During that time RFID use in other areas of our lives has overtaken libraries (one of the first markets to see its potential) and disappeared over the horizon.

RFID is becoming ubiquitous. It’s even in the devices (still called “phones” but these days rarely used for making calls) that we all carry around in our pockets. The card we use for travel or pay our bills uses RFID, even the walls in the buildings in which we work may soon be active. More »