By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist
You may have stopped by the library and noticed some little white tags on a number of our materials. Last year, the library began the initiative to place RFID tags on every single item in our collection. We’re nearing the final stretch of this huge project as the last of our books are being tagged before we move on to our audio-visual collection.
So what exactly are these tags and what do they do? Is the library spying on me?
No, the library isn’t spying on you. We’re just happy you’re checking out materials and we intend to make it even easier for you to do so moving forward.
RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” In the simplest terms, there is an electronic circuit imprinted on the tags. Under normal circumstances, the tags do nothing at all as they have no active power source. When specific radio waves interact with the circuit, the tag emits preprogrammed data in the form of the item’s barcode number. If the code is within range of a receiver, the receiver will pick up this signal and feed it into the library’s integrated library system, which is responsible for recording materials that are checking in and checking out.
Another way to imagine this is if the RFID tag were a sailor in a dinghy at sea. That sailor’s job is to shout the number “five” whenever he hears a foghorn from a passing ship. If random ships hear him shouting “five” then he’ll be ignored, but if the library ship sailing by hears the number five, it will know to log that number and send a corresponding book out to sea.
A weird analogy, but that’s a “Mad About Science” staple.
How are these tags going to change your experience at the library? They will make the check-in and check-out process faster and more precise. Scanning barcodes takes a considerable amount of time when you factor in the quantity of items moving through the library on an hourly basis. Barcodes can also be missed by scanners or staff, which lead to phantom books — items that a patron may possess but aren’t currently checked out to any accounts. Phantom books make it difficult for staff to find holds and are one of the most likely reasons why the hold you placed hasn’t shown up for over a week, despite it being listed as present in the library.
Finding holds and missing books will become a more efficient process with RFID tags. Currently, staff need to visually scan shelves for items placed on hold. As any of our volunteers can attest, this leads to getting cross-eyed after about 40 minutes of intense searching.
If a book happens to be misshelved then it’s very easy to miss during a visual scan. Utilizing a radio wand makes this much easier, as it can tell staff whether or not a book they’re looking for is on a particular shelf or is completely gone.
One of the most impressive and time-saving features of this project is the ability to set a stack of books down on a check-out pad to check them all out at once, instead of scanning each one individually. This will be incorporated at staff desks as well as a brand new self-check station. This will work hand-in-hand with our new security gate system, which will let both staff and patrons know if an item was missed during the check-out process, allowing for far fewer phantom books gumming up our holds searches and causing frustration for everyone.
A similar subset application of RFID is NFC, or “near-field communication.” This is what you see with tap-to-pay credit card chips and phone readers. NFC is optimized for extremely short-range communication so the user has ultimate control over their sensitive data. Things like credit cards, insurance information and more are well suited for NFC.
And before you start panicking, don’t worry: The library receivers don’t interact with any of your credit card information. The library RFID system is only able to gather and utilize information that’s directly linked to the integrated library system. The only information we have linked to the tags at all is the barcode number of a scanned item. Locational tracking outside of the walls of the three library branches is completely impossible and the tags are not self-powered.
That being said, RFID technology has kicked up some controversy in the nation and world at large, particularly regarding informational consent. RFID technology has been utilized with chips implanted in pets, which allows shelters to run a radio wand over a pet and pull up a file of the owner’s contact information. The entity doing this would need access to the database that houses this information, so the likelihood of a stranger on the street both possessing the technology and access to that database is extremely low.
The ethics of businesses or government agencies encouraging or forcibly implanting people with RFID tags is a hotly debated topic. The efficacy of performing a voluntary or involuntary surgery on someone to implant an unreliable radio tag when they could just access records directly from smartphones is extremely low and we’re unlikely to be implanted with radio tags any time soon.
The next time you’re in the library checking out a book, take a peek in the back and see what was discussed here. However, please don’t attempt to remove the tags — they are totally harmless, there’s no way the library or any other government agency could use these to track you in any way and removal accrues a $5 processing fee for each tag taken off an item. Ultimately, we’re doing this to make your experience at the library a more pleasant experience to give you more time to read and enjoy your movies.
Stay curious, 7B.
This post was originally published on here