Earlier this week I mentioned that Bibliotheca have announced a new memorandum of understanding with Civica.

Last night I was delighted to see the following reply from Johannes Rogg, Managing Director of Bibliotheca’s UK company posted on the UK RFID list:

“Hi Mick,

Thanks for your valuable comments. I fully agree with your statement, that HF is currently the frequency of choice for libraries; this is a main reason for this announcement.

With regards to your question on encryption I have no idea where this rumour is coming from, but Bibliotheca currently supplies to specification required by customer and market and our standard supply is the Danish data model with no encryption. Our BiblioChip technology enables us to support multiple data models in the same deployment and to rewrite chips on new models including the upcoming ISO standard on the fly.

One more word to you blog entry from yesterday, which I enjoyed reading very much:

You say. “To overcome this gap Civica is partnering with Bibliotheca to offer our fully standardized HF solution based on the BiblioChip technology and our experience and proactive standardization policy in this area.”

…which appears to imply that all Civica’s existing HF based installations are not standards based.”

As you know UK market is relatively standardised and will be more so when we can adopt the ISO standard and the UK profile. World-wide things are broader and its important for Bibliotheca as a world-wide player to meet these requirements whether for tags, interfacing standards or elsewhere.

Equally as a supplier it makes our life easier of standards are adopted so please keep evangelising standard such as ISO 28560-2. Success in broadening adoption is good for libraries and suppliers and will reduce costs for all in the longer term.

Best regards

Johannes Rogg
Managing Director

Bibliotheca RFID Library Systems Ltd.

I posted a brief reply to the list but as most of the points he was answering related to those made here I thought it might be helpful to post his reply here as well.

I asked whether Bibliotheca encrypted any of their data – a question we asked everyone who attended the meetings that established the UK data model back in 2009. Bibliotheca had not been present at that meeting so it seemed reasonable to ask them now. Apparently there is a rumour going around that some Bibliotheca sites have encrypted data. Well frankly it’s a bit more than a rumour – some libraries with Bibliotheca systems do have encrypted data (they have written to tell me so) - but no-one seems to know why. To be fair to Johannes he says that they prefer to adhere to standards – but also implies that they will always do whatever the customer tells them.

I’ve heard that argument from other suppliers.

Now I happen to believe that many librarians aren’t very sure of their ground here (because they tell me they’re not) and that many have previously asked for things that aren’t necessarily a good idea. I also happen to think that suppliers have a duty of care to advise when an idea might not be such a good one.  I’ve lost a lot of business that way .

My main point – that Civica already have an HF RFID solution in the UK – wasn’t really answered at all. Instead I am reminded that it’s a big world and people elsewhere have different needs (with no apparent irony) and that Bibliotheca have a product that meets all of them. Readers with long memories may remember that I commented on this product when it was launched in the US. No-one answered my concerns at the time, maybe they will now?

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