RFID Follows Art

Manual record errors would also be reduced, Wilson says, as would the time required to locate any of the 2 million items in the museum's collection. But most important, she notes, the collection's security would be greatly enhanced.

"No object could leave the Otago Museum storage areas without having a change of location updated in the Vernon database automatically," Wilson says. "This report would then be checked for authenticity and approved."

Otago Museum is currently auditing its collection, Rogan indicates, which would be an ideal time to adopt RFID tracking. "They move their collections a lot, for exhibitions, research or loans, and want to automate tracking as it is currently a labor-intensive process," he says. "We would expect it to receive a return on investment within 12 months, based on significantly reduced labor costs associated with tracking objects."

What's more, because it is integrated with the collection-management system, it would avoid problems with the CMS not being regularly updated regarding the movement of items, which can result in location information being weeks or months out of date.

Initially, Rogan says, Otago Museum would have 26 fixed readers throughout its facility, with 100,000 objects tagged initially. But eventually, he adds, 1 million items would likely be tagged.