Alternatives to barcodes for book identification

Question

Barcodes are cheap and they work, but they often also cover up parts of the book's cover. They could be stuck to the inside, but this is often inconvenient.

I've often been wondering what alternatives there are for identifying who borrows which books?

There are several considerations to think of:

• Impact on book (does it cover something? hinder something?)
• Price of installation
• Reliability
• Ease of use
• Bonus features

Answer 1

RFID tagging is one option. (I am in no way affiliated with the site linked here.)

RFID is a combination of radio-frequency-based technology and microchip technology. The information contained on microchips in the tags affixed to library materials is read using radio frequency technology regardless of item orientation or alignment (i.e., the technology does not require line-of-sight or a fixed plane to read tags as do traditional theft detection systems) and distance from the item is not a critical factor except in the case of extra-wide exit gates. The corridors at the building exit(s) can be as wide as four feet because the tags can be read at a distance of up to two feet by each of two parallel exit sensors.

There is, however some concern with RFID tags:

A concern surrounding RFID in issue of privacy. Because some RFID tags can be read from up to 100 metres (330 ft), there is some concern over whether sensitive information could be collected from an unwilling source. However, library RFID tags do not contain any patron information, and the tags used in the majority of libraries use a frequency only readable from approximately 10 feet (3.0 m). Further, another non-library agency could potentially record the RFID tags of every person leaving the library without the library administrator's knowledge or consent.

There are ways around these concerns, though - making sure the tags are coded in such a way that they only have meaning when related to the library's specific database system, for example.

Answer 2

It's not just a matter of covering things. Barcodes have the benefit of being human-readable, offering easy identification even when reading equipment misbehaves. Also, whenever they're handled by library staff, they're taking at least a cursory glance at the book in question.

RFID tags are an entirely different beast. They can be placed in an unobtrusive way, and are thus subjecting the book to a more honour-based system, especially if combined with patron-operated "self-check" borrowing and returning units. Fraudulent users can manipulate the system to avoid having the book registered onto their own account with very little creative thinking.

Sloppy programming or human interface design can lead to other sources of error, including tags reprogrammed with errant information. Since there's little evidence making the error imminent the moment it happens, it's gradually deteriorating the credibility of the data base to a certain extent.

Also, we're gluing these hardware stickers with a limited life-time into media we're expecting to last way beyond the lifetime of the sticker. The sticker usually doesn't carry any additional, human-readable identification, so the moment it fails to answer the reading device, the book will have to be re-identified and re-tagged manually.

As to the original concern: even placing the sticker inside the book doesn't warrant that it doesn't cover information. I've seen archived catalogs of art where there was no white space inside or outside of the brochure, and the sticker covered a substantial part of both imaging and text.

Then there are privacy concerns. "Who borrows which book" is a question we're not really allowed to ask. "Which books get borrowed more frequently than others" would be a valid question, but any kind of "who" going beyond general user groups is going to be problematic.

Answer 3

An RFID tag is less visually intrusive than visible barcodes; it doesn't need to be placed on the outside of a book for circ-desk ergonomics, either, so it can be put on the inside of the cover. The price is somewhat higher, and while nearly every library has barcode readers sitting around, fewer have RFID readers sitting around, so you'll have initial costs for purchasing and installing the readers and training the circ staff. There will also be a transitional period while you convert your collection to RFID.

Many of these concerns applied to your library when it first automated its collection and converted its card catalog, of course. You'll have to decide whether the usefulness of RFID is worth its cost in effort and funding.

One final thought: converting to RFID won't help the books you've already got barcodes on. You'll likely have to leave the barcode stickers where they are, even if you do add an RFID tag. But the books you add to your collection in the future can have the full cover visible!

dsalo was kind enough to suggest "Management of RFID in Libraries" by Karen Coyle and allowed me to integrate that suggestion into my answer.

Answer 4

In most libraries I've seen, there are two distinct functions of spine/cover labels:

1. Show the call number for easy shelving and retrieval.
2. Uniquely identify the item for circulation, as with a barcode.

It seems to me that function #2 can be accomplished with RFID, if you want to invest in it, or with barcodes on the inside cover, if you don't mind the wear and tear on both the items and the circ staff's hands.

But function #1 requires that the label must be visible on the spine in order to work properly. Perhaps what we really want is for the covers of library editions to be slightly altered so that a standard amount of space (perhaps 40mm) at the bottom can be covered without obscuring other information, like this:

Saying so is much easier than getting the publishing industry to start doing it, though.

Answer 5

In the UK at least it is absolutely normal for barcodes to be positioned on the inside of the book. This doesn't always avoid the problem of obscuring important parts of the book - something I've noticed particularly, although not uniquely, on children's board books where the covers inside and out are an integral part of the content.

In my experience RFID tags tend to be larger than a standard library barcode, and of course can have a unique ID for the item printed on them as a alphanumeric, barcode or both - for exactly the reasons mentioned in the answer from Tatjana. However, because of their larger size, in items where it is impossible to attach a tag without obscuring some part of a picture or text the situation is worse than with the smaller barcode.

When I was young my local public library used a photographic charging device (detailed here http://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/5579/librarytrendsv3i2i_opt.pdf?sequence=1) which captured a photographic image of the item and the patron's ID. One could imagine a modern version of this combining high resolution images with very small representations of the items unique identifier (microdots anyone?) - which would minimize the amount of the item covered by the representation of the ID.