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Dear all

Thanks to everybody who sent me their stories and comments about security after Ian published his thoughts on the topic in Public Library News. (http://www.publiclibrariesnews.com/campaigning/efficiencies-2/efficiencies-reducing-expenditure/the-gates-dont-work-why-you-should-save-money-by-not-using-library-security).

I've written a brief review of the solution that inspired Ian's piece - from West Downs, Queensland after receiving more details from Sylvia Swalling (Library Service Coordinator at West Downs) - on my RFID blog ( http://www.mickfortune.com/Wordpress/?p=1205 ).

You won't be surprised to hear that I've also entered a plea for libraries using RFID to weigh up the pros and cons very carefully before possibly deciding to remove it - but perhaps not for the reasons you might expect.

Whilst I have your attention I thought I'd mention a request for help I received last week from a librarian with a different security problem - that of false alarms. I thought it might be worth explaining how their problem arose in the hope that it may help others avoid it.

The library in question is a special collection within a university building that also houses the main collection. The special collection recently introduced RFID and tagged all of their items according to BIC's UK recommendations. AFI data on the tags ensures that items will set off the alarms if the security bit has not been cleared.

The main collection has also been tagged - but the library is not yet using RFID to manage it. All the tags in the main collection do not have the security cleared so anyone bringing in an item from the main collection to the special one (probably most users) sets off the alarms. 

There's a lot of free information on why this happens on both my blog, website and on the BIC site so I won't go into details here. I just wanted to point out that RFID technology isn't something that is confined to use in a single library. How you implement it could affect others - and not just libraries so please at least talk to your fellow professionals in the same building first.

Thanks for your time.

Mick





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