According to Marshall Breeding’s excellent website 3M HQ yesterday announced their support for ISO 28560. So far I have been unable to find the story on 3M’s own site but it’s good news to know that the US are backing the decision made in Bracknell and announced in October 2009.

The delay – and indeed the nature of the announcement – does raise a slight concern about the nature of 3M’s development plans. I think we all believed the original statement, which had the added force of being agreed with the newly formed “RFID Alliance”, had already given us a clear statement on 3M’s postion regarding 28560 but perhaps this wasn’t the view from across the pond.

The press release is of course the usual excellent piece of marketing we would expect from a global leader in the library market but the wise reader will look beyond the breezier comments about the apparent simplicity of running as many different data models as you can shake a stick at – particularly those early adopters still waiting to deploy some of the expensive hardware they have bought, and if there was no problem, why did 3M and others spend so much time and effort (as the press release reminds us) finding ways to solve it?

But this is a time for rejoicing! At least one of the walls that restricted librarians freedom of choice appears to be finally coming down. Now we have to make sure that a bigger wall – that of proprietary communication protocols – doesn’t replace it.

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