The costs of applying RFID labels to library books, to enable them to be usable in a self-service library service, as has been proposed by the Isle of Wight council, have been revealed.
Mick Fortune, who has decades of experience of library automation system, stating at the British Library in 1972, has told VentnorBlog that, with all costs included, it should costs 38-40p per book.
As a guide, Newport library alone has 37,000 books, producing a bill of between £14,060 and £14,800, to prepare them to be used in a self-service system.
The process of tagging all of the books is usually done by a third-party company. Sometimes staff or volunteers get involved, but need to carefully monitored to ensure the tags are added correctly.
Additional costs per library
Additional costs would be kiosks for use by the public to withdraw and bring-back books costing between £6k-£12,000 each. Mick says that there are usually at least two per library.
To reduce the number of people just walking out with the books, without putting them on their account, security gates cost £6,000 per pair.
Staff workstations would be an additional £1,000.
Full details are in his detailed RFID article.
Image: denverjeffrey under CC BY-SA 2.0
