Gotcha!

Kickapoo High School's library in Springfield, MO, was featured in its city's newspaper in July after a reporter learned that it had lost 187 books, worth about $2,000, to theft during the 2001–02 school year. Kickapoo High library's annual materials budget is only $9,000, so "you can't keep up," says librarian Deborah Dick. Particularly disheartening is the Springfield School District's attempt to build up its library collections to meet state standards, while the books being stolen are often those most necessary for standards-based assignments. Further, the $2,000 is only a small part of the more than $40,000 of materials that disappeared from the Springfield School District's 52 schools.

Reed Middle School, also in the Springfield district, only lost 12 books last year, worth about $200, because its librarian, Robin Cashman, won a grant, sponsored by the American Association of School Librarians and funded by library security company 3M, that gave the library a $25,000 security system. Reed Middle's system is based on the use of the 3M's TattleTape technology, a standard for library security for more than 25 years. 3M continues to stand behind its TattleTape technology, in which electromagnetically charged strips or disks are inserted into the spines of books or placed on the upper surfaces of CDs or DVDs. But a new technology threatens to knock it from its perch.

That new technology is called RFID, short for radio-frequency identification, and it's used for far more than security. Checking items out and back in again becomes much faster. When teamed with a portable scanner—it looks sort of like a Palm Pilot with a handle—staff members can pass the device over shelves or book trucks and locate specific items for students or teachers who are looking for them, read the shelves, find an item that a student claims was returned, or do an inventory in a fraction of the time those activities normally take. The technology has been available for about three years, and the librarians who work with RFID systems—primarily academic and public librarians—think they're great. But the one thing that keeps them out of schools is cost: a system from one of the three big security companies—3M, Checkpoint, or VTLS—costs in the neighborhood of $75,000 to $100,000.

A big part of the expense of an RFID system is the cost of the thousands of postage-stamp-sized identification tags—in reality small computer chips. These tags serve double duty: they replace the bar codes found on most library materials as well as the security strips such as TattleTapes. Incorporating RFID technology into circulation systems means the tags don't require "line-of-sight," as bar codes do. Instead of scanning items individually using a laser scanner, the antenna scanners that send the radio waves that activate the RFID tags can read all of the tags in a stack of 20 picture books in a fraction of a second, without opening one book. The result: practically instantaneous checkout of every book in the stack. If an RFID scanner is placed in a book drop box, all items in it can be checked in as soon as they're returned. Self-checkout, which can be tricky when children and bar code scanners are involved, becomes much simpler because bar codes don't need to be correctly "lined up."

Although they have barely penetrated the school market, RFID systems have found homes in an increasing number of public libraries. Beverly Papai, director of the Farmington (MI) Community Library (FCL) has been very pleased with the Checkpoint Intelligent Library System that has been installed for almost three years in the Farmington Branch Library. Because the library is located in a prosperous, pro-library suburb northwest of Detroit, the branch has been able to purchase a sophisticated book return system that would be the envy of most libraries. When users place books in the book-return slot, they drop onto a conveyor belt that carries them past RFID scanners that automatically check them in and sort them into categories (such as fiction, nonfiction, and picture books).

At the end of the belt is a robotic arm that places each book, by category, on the appropriate book truck. Papai says the system, which sounds like something out of a science-fiction movie, will be cost-effective over the long term because it saves many thousands of hours in staff time. FCL is able to better utilize the staff, having them answer reference questions or straightening out problems with people's library cards, instead of moving materials around behind the desk. "Items don't have to be handled until they're shelved," she says, "and our staff can be better used for community outreach." The Intelligent Library System is now being installed in FCL's renovated main library, due to open this fall. Papai says that in the new library, the circulation desk allows staff members to simply slide items over an area of the desk—under which is located an RFID scanner—to check them out. When the library performed a time-and-motion study of the system, it discovered that the number of repetitive motions that can injure a staff member's arms or wrists were reduced by 30 percent.

Both the Checkpoint and VTLS systems add a new twist to library security, too. Instead of the familiar electromagnetic stanchions through which users must pass to enter and exit the library, RFID stanchions allow the system to tell staff immediately 1) exactly which books are going out through the doors and 2) whether they've been checked out or not. If a user is trying to slip a CD out under a jacket, the author, title, and item number will come right up on a circulation desk monitor. What's even more intriguing is that if the user has his library card in his pocket, the system can tell you who is making off with that CD.

It's possible that the widespread use of library cards with RFID tags may raise concerns about privacy, because these systems do make it possible for staff to both see and record who is entering and exiting the library. Papai believes that "it depends on what librarians do with this information. I'd like to know if such-and-such a percent of such-and-such number of patrons use the library but never check out a book. If we can collect information that assists in serving people better, we're justified, but we have a responsibility to see that it doesn't fall into misuse."

But before any of these concerns are raised, each public and school library's books, CDs, and library cards must bear RFID tags, and right now each of those tags costs between 85 cents and a dollar. The vendors who make the systems, however, don't believe they'll be that expensive for long. Brent Bell, Checkpoint's U.S. library sales manager, believes the tags will make their way into thousands of retail stores—the nation's Wal-Marts and Circuit Citys—over the next few years. "Libraries are a minute niche market," he says. "It will be [the tags' use in] retail that drives the price down." Some experts believe that the cost of an RFID tag could drop to as low as five cents when purchased in large quantities by 2005. Although libraries would buy only a relatively small number of tags, their proliferation—and anticipated 80 to 90 percent reductions in their cost—would make it possible for school libraries to purchase the systems.

Kickapoo High School librarian Deborah Dick likes the idea of an RFID system for her library. But this year, the Springfield School District may only be able to afford to give a few of its middle schools and high schools basic TattleTape systems. "It's always the money," she says with a sigh. But it may not be long before systems that both catch books walking out the door—and allow the librarian to do annual inventories in a couple of hours—become affordable for the nation's school libraries.