By David DormanAmerican Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org
By David Dorman
American Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org
Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois.
Column for September 2002
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, which has been simmering on the back burner for years, may be coming to a boil, if the increasing number of entrants into this nascent market is any indication. 3M, Checkpoint, VTLS, Codeco, Lucatron, and Tech Logic were all at the ALA Annual Conference in Atlanta strutting their wireless stuff.
I found a wide variety of approaches to RFID systems among the vendors. 3M stands alone in not offering security through its RFID tags, insisting that its Tattle-Tape Security Strips are superior for theft prevention. While this is a self-serving position to take in light of the fact that 3M virtually owns the security-strip market, the relative merits of security strips vs. RFID tags is an issue that potential RFID library customers will want to investigate.
There are other differences as well. Some vendors, such as 3M, tightly control the formatting of the data on the RFID chips, and will not discuss data format in any detail. Other systems, such as Lucatron’s Bibliotheca, are open and flexible about the data formats they use and will work with. Another difference is that some companies put only a unique barcode number and a toggle switch representing one of two states—checked in or checked out—on their RFID chips. Other companies add such data as the title and call number of the item. In the former case, the RFID system links to the item record in the ILS to get the data it needs; in the latter case, the RFID system itself reads the data on the chip without querying the ILS.
Most of the vendors are moving to support the ISO 15693 standard, a physical and session-level protocol. This is a “low-level” communication standard that has nothing to say about what data is on the chip, how that data is formatted, or the read/write requirements of the RFID equipment. ISO 15693 was designed for the transportation industry, and it won’t be too long before the RFID vendors in the library community begin to support ISO 18000, which is designed specifically for inventory control. But not to worry: ISO 18000 incorporates ISO 15693 so it will be backward-compatible.
A number of initiatives are underway to develop RFID data communication standardization between the RFID chip and its reader, but to my knowledge they are not near completion. However, the data transfer between the RFID reader and the local ILS typically adheres to the SIP2 industry standard. This will soon be replaced by the NISO NCIP protocol.
There are many choices and trade-offs for a library in the RFID marketplace, but the key to buying a system that will be a long-term investment is to get RFID tags that meet current standards and can be reprogrammed and used with the majority of RFID readers. This is your insurance that the investment your library makes in RFID tags will outlast its commitment to whatever RFID reader hardware is purchased.
With regard to the RFID chips themselves, VTLS says it will begin selling the tags for 66 or 67 cents each, which represents a gradual but steady price decline.
The announcement in June by Adobe of version 3.0 of the Adobe Content Server represents a milestone in the firm’s quest to be a major player in the e-book distribution marketplace. The company purchased Glassbook in August 2000 in order to obtain the technology behind the e-book content server that Glassbook announced in May of that year. Adobe was, and still is, hoping to parlay the popularity of its “electronic paper” technology—PDF (Portable Document Format)—into a dominant role in e-book distribution using PDF technology.
When Adobe first announced its plans for marketing the Glassbook Content Server in fall 2000, the company’s stated goal was to require a transaction payment each time the Content Server software was used to purchase content. This intent to take a bite out of every transaction utilizing the server has now been abandoned with the release of version 3.0.
In order to obtain content through the Adobe Content Server, users must have Adobe Acrobat E-book Reader software, which is freely available for downloading. This is an independent client—not a browser plug-in. The next major release of the Adobe Acrobat Reader client will add Acrobat E-book Reader functionality, resulting in a single Acrobat Reader product that will handle both PDF files and e-book content server files.
Adobe’s approach to access management is to have the access-control software reside on a content server. A document is only accessible to users when they get permission from the server to view the document. When a user gets the “key” to a document, he or she can download that document and view it offline, using the software key provided by the Content Server. However, the document remains encrypted, and can only be decrypted using the key. If the document is copied to another computer, that second computer will not be able to (legally) decrypt the document unless it, too, is given a key by the Content Server.
Adobe hopes that both individual libraries as well as content providers will use the Content Server. It is already in use by NetLibrary, Ebrary, and quite a few publishers. Visit the Adobe site for more information about the Adobe Content Server.