New Orleans Library Reopens with RFID

The new library is an important symbol of re-growth in the Bywater neighborhood, says Stacy Betts, head of library sales for Tagsys. "You walk through the neighborhood and it's still very depressed," Betts says. "There are still homes showing messages spray-painted by FEMA. A lot of homes are still vacant. But the library is a very nice building." The new library will serve as a community hub for nearby residents who need a place to come together, says Santi.

More and more libraries in the United States are following the lead of European and Asian libraries by adopting RFID. According to 3M Library Services, which competes with Tagsys for market share of RFID systems used by libraries, 2 percent of the 9,500 libraries in the United States currently use RFID for book tracking. Globally, 8 percent of libraries use the technology, while the yearly growth rate of libraries adopting RFID is estimated at 30 percent.

Singapore, one of the most technologically advanced countries in Asia, has deployed RFID throughout its national library system. Tagsys recently announced that it supplied 13.56 MHz tags for the Shenzhen Library, a new public library in the growing southern Chinese city of the same name. The facility is set to open in mid-July. It will use Tagsys' tags, which contain the Philips ICODE SLI chip and comply with ISO 18000-3, as well as readers to track and manage its collection of books and other media. The library is replacing an older main library in Shenzhen, a city that has experienced explosive population growth in recent years.

By the end of June, nearly two million tags will be attached to books, CDs and other media, while patrons will be issued library cards containing the same type of tag. They will present the cards and tagged media to Tagsys' self check-out stations throughout the library, which will automatically check the media out to the card-holder's account and deactivate the tag's anti-theft mechanism. Thus, alarms placed at all of the library's exits (also provided by Tagsys) will not sound an alarm as the patron leaves. (If patrons attempt to remove media that has not been checked out, they will set off the alarm.)

Tagsys worked with integration partner Shenzhen Seaever Enterprise, based in Shenzhen, to install the RFID infrastructure and integrate it with the library's IT system. At 530,000 square feet, the Shenzhen library is large enough to grow its collection to more than four million books. The library plans to service 8,000 patrons and circulate 50,000 volumes per day.