RF‐ID: Miracle or mirage?
| Date | 01 March 1998 |
| Pages | 43-49 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040695 |
| Published date | 01 March 1998 |
| Author | Steve Smith |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
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Implementing ATHENS at the University of York with the minimum of fuss
RF-ID:
Miracle or mirage?
by Steve Smith, BALib, Libraries
Director, Intelitag Ltd
The new technology of RF-ID, intelligent
tagging, has become widespread in some
industries such as distribution and baggage
handling, and is set to dominate retail security
in the near
future.
Library security and
automation are tailor-made applications for it
which are ready to
roll.
What is it and what
does it mean for Librarians?
Perhaps I should start with a disclaimer-this
contributor is to electronics what Mrs Merton's
Malcolm is to Street Cred, so anyone reading this
article to gain a profound technical insight into RF-
ID will be disappointed. I have often thought it
strange that a Librarian with a humanities back-
ground finds himself working in an offshoot of the
electronics industry, and there are still only two
ex-Librarians in the whole UK library security
business. But when a Library calls in a security
company, we don't send out a boffin from R&D,
we send someone with a vision of the Library's
problems who can translate the various technolo-
gies into a working solution.
Neither will I attempt an evaluative comparison of
the rival products. This seems to me a presumptu-
ous and meaningless exercise until many genuine
practitioners (Librarians themselves) have had the
chance of working with the systems for a while.
Until then, we would merely be comparing the
different sets of marketing hype.
And this reflects the brief for this article - to offer
not a technical analysis, nor an evaluation for
prospective buyers, but a personal vision of how
libraries might make use of the nascent technology
of
RF-ID
and where it might lead us.
Genesis
The early development of RF-ID seems shrouded
in mystery, or at least riddled with claims and
counter claims. Leaving aside the inevitability that
each of the developing companies will understand-
ably position itself as the real innovator, there do
seem to have been two separate processes - the
development of the intelligent tag
itself,
and the
creation of applications for it. I am not going to
pontificate on whether the chicken came before the
egg.
For example, the Australian company Integrated
Silicon Design Ltd has been developing solutions
of this kind since 1984 for many varied applica-
tions,
but it is primarily a creative company
concerned with technical innovations. Its creations
are manufactured on a sub-contract basis by
outside firms and the end-user applications are a
stage further removed. Its library technology was
facilitated by a partnership with the Singapore
Technologies Group, and between them they
developed arguably one of the two most profound
applications of RF-ID so far
—
for the public library
service of Singapore, who will inevitably have had
a major input into the end product themselves.
Singapore Central Library now use RF-ID for
virtually everything that moves, and intend rolling
out to the rest of their system in the medium term.
At the same time the Checkpoint Group were
developing RF-ID in partnership with Mitsubishi
of Japan, as a combined venture called the Dia-
mond Checkpoint Development Group. Here, the
creative spark for the intelligent tag had already
ignited when the main catalyst for the library
application occurred. I was privileged to be present
at a meeting of Checkpoint's European library
chiefs and Managing Directors in Hamburg in
January 1994, which effectively decided that
electro magnetics was never going to be an
adequate technology to marry with automation
systems. After seven years of pioneering
work, further development along these lines was
pointless. A new direction was required and
RF-ID seemed the way ahead for libraries. This
path again led to the other major application of
RF-ID so far in the Rockefeller University in New
York, where security, circulation control, stock
management and user self-service are all run by
RF-ID.
Alongside all this, 3M have been developing what
they call "the next wave of Materials Flow Man-
agement (MFM) technology", and here again 3M
scientists appear to have worked independently for
several years on the development of RF-ID trans-
ponders for their specialist use, but they rightly
acknowledge that the initial development of RF-ID
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