- Bibliotheca, an RFID technology company for the library industry, has built a new facility to serve the growing customer base in North America
- Libraries in Spanish Fork, UT and Garland County, AK, have cited the technology enabling them to expand
Thousands of libraries have adopted RFID technology to improve circulation and inventory management, and those installations are increasing exponentially post-Covid as the public continues to rely upon, enjoy and demand self-service options.
Patrons at small rural libraries, and larger municipalities all are benefitting from a system of automatic recognition of the media they are checking out. Book tags are sold in two sizes: 2 by 2 inch and 2 by 3 inch and are adhered to the inside of the cover. The RFID tag has a unique ID encoded on it, that links to details about the book in the library’s management software.
For Lisa Stamm, MLS at Bibliotheca, RFID’s benefits are about improved efficiency for patrons as well as libraries themselves. “It’s a remarkable tool for robust self-service opportunities both in and outside of library buildings, along with its ability to streamline collection management—inventorying, shelf reading,” she said.
Bibliotheca Expansion
To serve this growing demand, in the U.S. and beyond, Bibliotheca has opened a new 32,000-square-foot headquarters that includes office and industrial space.
Bibliotheca calls it the Customer Innovation Center, where libraries can explore the tech company’s latest solutions in a dedicated demonstration space. It features a newly designed training hub for the company’s field engineers, offering hands-on expertise and certification programs to ensure seamless support and help libraries maximize their technology.
Several U.S.-based libraries have launched their own system to manage the flow of media in and out of their facilities. For Spanish Fork, Utah, the system is helping with growth into a new larger facility.
Spanish Fork’s New Library
The Spanish Fork community is growing and so is the library that serves its 45,000 residents, said Scott Aylett, library director. They opened a new library in 2023 with about 40,000 square feet, as opposed to the previous version which was one-third the size.
It’s a busy time for the library. The community demand for materials is increasing. “We’ve just seen incredible increases in patronage circulation, program attendance, everything is up across the board,” said Aylett. “There was really no reason why we should be plateauing in terms of library usage.”
Part of the expansion includes an automated RFID based circulation system from Bibliotheca integrated by Bywater Solutions to link to its existing library management system (LMS). As the new facility was in the planning, library management introduced the UHF RFID system from Bibliotheca for patrons to use when checking out. Patrons used the readers built into kiosks to have their books identified and used the touch screen to identify themselves.
“We wanted to get patrons using RFID,” he said. “There’s one less thing that they’ve got to learn with the new building.”
They enlisted the help of volunteers to tag the collection of books they scanned the barcodes on each book, applied an RFID tag, and then read the tag at the kiosk. That created an association in the Bibliotheca software. With the help of volunteers—“we really pride ourselves as a community on volunteerism,” said Aylett,
Seismic Shift to Self Check
With RFID, the library transitioned from about 1 to 2 percent of all transactions going through a self-checkout kiosk to about 75 to 80 percent. Rather than wait in lines, users simply pile their books on the kiosk’s reading surface.
The new building has four reading kiosks on each floor with the ones on the main floor getting the most usage. Additionally, each floor has its own entrance point so RFID security gates are installed there. The gate can then read tags that have not been removed from circulation at the time of self-checkout.
“One nice thing about the Bibliotheca kiosks is the display that sits above the pad—its a pretty good distance that provides a guide for how many items you could fit on their reader,” commented Aylett.
There are some cases of patrons moving too fast with the checkout reader pad so that the tag is not deactivated. In such a case, patrons walk out the door and the gate at the reader could sound an alert. Spanish Forks library assigns a staff member close to the kiosks and exit and to help individuals with the technology.
Automated Returns
During the returns process, the library has deployed an automated materials handling system. As patrons return their materials, they go onto the conveyor belt system with two different RFID stations: the first one checks the item is deactivate and it activates the tag. The second RFID reader helps the system determine the book category and how it should routed for sorting and return to the shelves.
The automated check-in system saves labor time, where staff don’t need to manually check items. “In our old building we had one person all day long checking items in—and we have patrons that had maximized their accounts in terms of the number of items they could circulate and they would sit there and watch us check their items,” explained Aylett.
Now it all gets done automatically. “On a Sunday when we’re closed you can throw your books into the book drop and it’ll check them in and sort it,” he said.
The library is using the technology to manage all of its 78,000 items on the shelves. When librarians visit other libraries that aren’t using the technology, he said, Spanish Fork workers are evangelists for RFID adoption.
“We encourage those libraries that we interact with—that haven’t done it— to do it,” Aylett said.
Garland County Library Plans New Branches
In Arkansas, the Garland County Library had used RFID technology for years. But they anticipate it will help them in the coming year as they open new branches. “Historically we used barcode technology for circulation which requires you to open every item and scan it,” said Adam Webb, executive director at the Arkansas library system.
That could be slow, and cumbersome for patrons trying to scan their own barcodes and ensure now books weren’t missed.
“You can’t really do self checkout and have security at the same time—with the barcodes—and RFID fixed all of that for us,” Webb said. “There’s the integrated security chip and the ability to check an item in and out at the same time. It speeds up our circulation process it’s allowed us to operate our circulation desk which we used to have 6 clerks at a time doing that job now we have two.”
By reducing labor required for circulation, the library has been able to reallocate those employees to other tasks which allowed them to do more programs for kids and classes for seniors.
Use of NFC
There’s also a NFC component to the solution that enables a smart phone to interrogate the NFC chip at 13.65 MHz, to check a book in. or out in with an Android phone or iPhone.
The library has a desktop reader on which returned books are placed, to check them back in. In the future, however, Webb said, “with our new building plan, we’re working on putting in an automated materials handler.” He added that the cost of RFID tags has dropped low enough that they don’t increase cost much above the cost of barcodes.
‘We’re teaching patrons that they don’t have to scan the bar code because they’ll come up to the self-checkout machine and try to scan the ISBN on the on the book…a lot of our older items still have their barcodes in them from when we switched over,” he said.
Aid from Librarians
The task of the librarians is to help people—if they hear one of the machines sound an alert due to inactivity, “nine times out of 10 that’s because there’s a patron that’s over there trying to read the screen or understand the instructions,” said Webb.
The use of RFID will make it easier for the library to manage its inventory across multiple sites as new branches are opened. “That’s going to make it possible for us do inventory counts every year if we have multiple locations where material can be.” The library will break ground on the first of two new branches later this year.
They may acquire additional copies of some books. “We will need multiple copies of every James Patterson book — we won’t be able to just rely on one copy moving around from branch to branch,” said Webb.