Why I need RFID for my library ?

One of the Libraries I know has invested more than 2 Crores on RFID almost four years back and the status as of now is , their circulation system is still manual. There is a beautiful RFID antenna at the gate but it is switched off ! This being a public institute (to be precise a University) even there were articles in the news paper about this kind of colossal waste of money but after a few articles nothing has changed much.

Another incidence was a tender by a company who wanted to invest almost 1 Crore for implementing RFID in a Library which was having not more than 1000 books !

I think it is a national loss - and that is the reason , it is very essential that a Librarian should ask himself or herself a question , why am I going for a RFID system ?

If your objective is theft control , then you will have to decide what is the tolerance level you can accept in detecting the stolen book ? Because if you want 100 % accuracy then you may have to think of a UHF solution which can be very expensive than the HF solution which every vendor will suggest you. Before that find out a report about how many books really went missing last year - now unless you do not stack rare books , you will observe that usually the cost of the missing books for last five may be less than the RFID system ! Of course if you stack rare books then this logic will not work. But Theft Control can not be the only purpose for going for a RFID solution.

Next thing that you might want to consider is , how many books your patrons take in one go. If they are not taking more than 2 books every time , the time difference between RFID and Barcode is not going to be great.

So unless you do not have a very large circulation department with people taking multiple books in one go etc. RFID really does not become a very efficient system.

Now there are many Librarians I know who want to have a RFID solution because they just want to tell everyone in a conference that "We have RFID" ..... It is just a matter of pride ,

Well for them there is a very simple solution than investing such huge money.

Call your local carpenter and ask him to make a gate antenna which looks like an RFID antenna (you can get hundreds of picture on the net). Put couple of red lights and do not even connect to an electric point.

Make two rectangular boxes and put some white mica on it and tell you circulation guys to keep the books on that every time they issue the books .

No one in the world will ever think that you really do not have a RFID system !