Interesting post from Catherine Dhanjal on the lists this afternoon announcing their intentions.

From other correspondence received it seems clear that the “rough wooing” of existing D Tech clients has begun in earnest with Newcastle now being singled out already as a key Bibliotheca site.

How this pans out in contractual and support terms is, of course, entirely a matter for the parties involved and hopefully solutions that suit client’s needs will be paramount in everyone’s mind as the story develops.

From my own perspective – and increasingly from the point of view of all those who seek to create more co-operative service models in the future there are still one or two slight concerns niggling at the back of my mind.

Last week I was delighted to report that progress toward the publication of ISO 28560 in all three parts was proceeding as rapidly as could be expected. The creation of a common foundation for RFID development is in my opinion, as regular readers will know, key for both library co-operation and future service development so anything that might prevent us from achieving that goal makes me nervous.

I wrote to Matthias Joos expressing my concern that Bibliotheca’s web pages gave strong endorsement to ISO 28560-3 with no mention of the UK’s preferred option of 28560-2 and he was quick to reassure me that Bibliotheca intend to support both versions.

He also used the opportunity to promote the same “dual data model” self-service kiosk that I have already criticised on these pages (when D Tech took me to task for doing so!).

This is the kiosk that can convert data models “on the fly”. The claim is made that by using it you can convert all your stock in 3-4 months.

My question previously ”how do you manage the stock that isn’t circulated in this period?”  wasn’t answered then either. From the responses I’ve had to the question I asked earlier in the week it seems that only a small percentage of stock would have been circulated in 3-4 months, leaving a huge amount unconverted.

Since self-service is only one aspect of RFID stock management how does a library identify which items on the shelf have which model? The answer that most UK RFID suppliers seem to have reached is to enable all their devices to read two models. Hopefully that will be Bibliotheca’s conclusion as well.

This is a minor concern though. The phrase that worries me in the press release is “… supplying customer-specific state-of the art RFID solutions” (my emphasis). I’m sure it’s more a question of ”lost in translation” rather than indicating a return to a proprietary approach but I really hope it doesn’t mean that libraries will be encouraged to operate outside of the new standard.

Those concerns aside it is of course good news for UK libraries that another major player has arrived – and just in time for the November conference too! I’m really looking forward to meeting them there!

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