Oh, So Cool!!!

One of my tasks at ILA was to garner information on a new self-checkout. My favorite was one that incorporates a "pay station". If the patron has fines, he or she can pay them right at the self-checkout with cash or a credit card. Think about the self-checkouts at the grocery or retail store and you're headed in the right direction. If that wasn't enough "cool" for you, one of the add on options was an RFID scanner. Wikipedia explained RFID pretty well here. I liked their explanation because it showed the Wal-Mart tag, which I now remember seeing on items I have purchased there, mainly Wii components, and wondering what that was at the time. They also have a nice example of how it is used in I-Passes on the tollways.

Why is this technology so great? The selling point for me was that you can check a stack of books (around 6 at a time) in or out--immediately! For a library such as mine which has to do each book individually, this is huge. The rep told us about a library in Kentucky that added 5 of these self-checks and as a result, has been able to decrease their Circ staff from 5 to 3 and the remaining 2 employees are able to 100% devote their work time to other projects. Of the 3 current circ employees, 2 still deal with the check-in/check-outs and the other is on hand to register new patrons, answer the phones, greet patrons, etc. This really struck a chord with me, because at my library we find it hard to dedicate one person to solely performing customer/patron service.

The other awesome thing about RFID is that it works like a GPS. When patrons check the materials out, a signal is sent to the security gates saying it's ok for that item to leave. If an item is not checked out, when it passes through the gates, libraries will know exactly which item is being abducted. One of our librarians at work said she heard that if you scan these items on a shelf, it will also tell you which items are incorrectly shelved. Ok, now I'm getting nerd goosebumps!