Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being extensively used by members of the London Libraries Consortium for self-service, improved stock management and to facilitate longer opening hours. Around a third of London is served by the consortium’s library services. The most recent RFID installations are at Tooting (Wandsworth), Wandsworth Town, Clapton (Hackney), John Jackson (Enfield), Enfield Town and Gants Hill (Redbridge).
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Wandsworth libraries has had RFID in its Earlsfield library since 2008 and at the new Wandsworth Town library since it opened in August 2009. Geoff Boulton, Library Strategy and Performance Manager, explains the reasoning behind its introduction, “Wandsworth Town library is in a listed building and comprises a series of rooms rather than an open plan library. In order to provide maximum opening hours over six days a week and to make best use of staff, we decided to use self-service machines so that we did not need to have a librarian permanently in each of the six rooms.” Branch Librarian, Daniel Andrews, added, “People are still wowed by being able to put a whole pile of books on the machine and the machine reading the information from them all at once.”
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Brent Libraries have 10 fully self-service libraries with the remaining two facilities to follow suit by Autumn 2010. There the main motivator was to free up staff to help customers and to promote stock and events. Sue McKenzie, Head of Libraries in the borough, says, “The key to moving to self-service is to build up staff skills and attitude in advance, to promote RFID to the public and to encourage staff to floor-walk. The customer panels we have for each library were also immensely helpful in providing advice on the best ways to promote and introduce the new technology.”
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