RFID Strategy

Albany County Public Library

Conditions to be met before implementation:

• Technology must be observed to be stable and standard.
  • There should be many effective models of smaller public libraries that have implemented it.
• Total cost of implementation must be observed to have bottomed out.

Principles of implementation:

• This should be a system we can expect to use for 20+ years.
• Staff tasks should be reduced or replaced rather than multiplied
• The library should have a plan for every step of integrating this into the library workflow
• There should be a clear and realistic timetable for conversion
• The library and library staff should have control over the process, rather than the vendor
• Outsourcing book vendors (such as Baker and Taylor for example) should be able to apply RFID chips to books before the library receives them
• All possible privacy concerns should be rigorously answered and responses should be ready if these concerns should be raised in the future

Guestimates:

• Regardless of what vendors now say, the target price per RFID chip should be under 50 cents.
• A reasonable price for initial implementation should be under $100K total.
  • It would definitely cost much more to do this now.

References:

RFID Technology for Libraries by Richard W. Boss

http://www.ala.org/ala/pla/plapubs/technotes/rfidtechnology.htm