I'll Be Watching You...Watching Me

In fiddling with actually posting draft posts of late, I found the stats page! Fun with statistics! I can even see what pages you were on before you clicked on mine. I got a nice ego stoking from my page view numbers which was quickly deflated by realized that about half of those visits were me checking for comments. Alas. This blog is also coming to end as well. I'd like to say I'd keep it up but there's every possibility that real life will get in the way of my individual pursuits. This is why I have a massive backlog of fiction to read.

More to the point, I've been fiddling around on the ALA website of late. I have recently located the PLA branch of it as well. On the PLA website they have a technological toolkit that includes a simple guide to the benefits of RFID technologies. A lot of the things on it are things we've previously discussed in the blog like improved service and reliability but they also include a list of cons. The only real con I've included thus far have been the expense of such systems to implement and operate. I thought it might be useful to enumerate the ones they specified and discuss the costs and benefits of each. Yes I'm going to try to find benefits to cons. Deal with it.

First and foremost there are the compatibility issues. This is an issue for most modern technology, not just RFID tags. Just like you can't use a Wii disc on a PS3, you generally can't use RFID tags with systems they aren't directly made for. Even if they are made in the same place by the same people. Even if the RFID tag vendors merge. It's an issue in how the tag is coded that makes them essentially incompatible. This makes buying RFID tags at all a bit pointless, because you have to buy a whole new system plus tags when a new breakthrough comes, which is exactly what I said about PSPs. (And who still uses PSPs?) At least that's what the PLA tells you. In later paragraphs they go on to explain newly enforced production standards that would allow for interoperability in tags and systems. Which makes the only people who are bothered by this point the ones that already have these systems and probably won't be reading that article. The one remaining issue to this point is that some companies might fail to actually implement these standards because they might hurt the profit margins for such vendors. This is a valid point, but even the stingiest vendors have to comply to demand eventually especially as other vendors work with the standards and start to monopolize the available costumers. The real issue here is that librarians could be purchasing less wisely than they should. Discuss the interoperability of the product you're looking for and be willing to put off RFID tag integration until such a time as the standards are more...well, standard.

Well it's getting pretty late actually. Or early. Depends on how you look at it. I'll post part two of my discussion of RFID tag weaknesses tomorrow once I have written it. Goodnight!

EDIT: I thought these were self explanatory but a friend told me I should specify that Wii, PS3, and PSP are gaming systems. The last two stand for Playstation 3 and Playstation Portable respectively.

References

American Library Association. (2011, October 10). RFID technology for libraries. Retrieved from http://www.ala.org/pla/tools/technotes/rfidtechnology

Pandian, M. P. (2010). RFID for libraries: A practical guide. Oxford: Chandos.