Tuesday 21 February 2012

PERRY COMMON LIBRARY TO GET BOOK SCANNING MACHINE

Birmingham Library and Archives are rolling out RFID self service machines at a number of Community Libraries across the city.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a system that is being adopted by library authorities across the country.
What happens is each book is fitted with an RFID tag which contains all of the information about that title and this tag is read by the self service machine. This method is already operating at the Central Library and some others in the city.
Perry Common Library like a number of others is now due to have one of these systems installed.
Please note however It will take a while for the machines to become operational as all of the books at each library will need to have RFID tags fitted and those tags then need to be activated, so it may take anything between 6 months and a year for this work to be completed.

When you use the system you will simply place your books for loan in the machine along with your card and the machine will register the titles and issue them to your card card. At the end of the transaction it prints out a list of the books and the date they need to be returned.

I have requested that once in operation we should have staff a member instructing people on its use but it is fairly self explanatory as there is an on screen video instructing users on its operation. However there may be some people especially the elderly who need assistance.

Using this new technology should help us in our aim to keep all our libraries open and retain as many staff as possible,

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