Library to Deploy Ultra-Long-Life RFID Tags for Historical Collection

"RFID is ideal for library technology," says Harmut Marder, CEO of Bibliotheca Germany. "We have seen a 25 to 50 percent speed improvement in the internal workflow of our customers." Tagging the Max Planck Institute library's collection, and building the associated databases, is scheduled to begin in September of this year and will last through 2010 to 2011, Marder says. In addition, the institute plans to build a new library by 2010 that will have RFID interrogators installed throughout the building.

Each wafer-thin, credit-card-size label contains NXP's recently launched Icode SLI-SY chip, specifically designed to ensure the long-term integrity of data burned onto the tag. The labels cost between €0.45 and €0.55 ($0.71 to $0.87) each, Marder says, and comply with the ISO 15693 RFID standard, adopted by over 2,500 libraries worldwide.

The Longlife labels are the first in the RFID industry to offer a guaranteed lifespan of 40 years, says Rainer Lutz, NXP's marketing manager. Previously, tags typically offered an eight- to 10-year lifespan. Tests conducted by the company's automotive division, Lutz claims, suggest the tags could retain data for as long as 100 years.

According to Lutz, the market for RFID tags for libraries will total about 200 million units in 2008, with the Longlife labels currently serving only a small portion of that total market. Eventually, he foresees additional demand for the product beyond the library segment.

"We see similar applications for museums," Lutz states. "We see museums in Poland and the Netherlands that already use RFID tags to keep track of their collections." Government and health archives, he says, are other segments to which the Longlife label could be applied.