RFID in Libraries and Document Management: Smarter Collections, Better Service
Libraries are, at their core, systems for organizing and providing access to physical objects at scale. A large academic or public library may hold millions of books, journals, audiovisual materials, and special collections items, each of which must be located, tracked, lent, returned, and maintained. For decades, barcodes and manual processes were the primary tools for this task — and they worked, after a fashion, but at the cost of significant staff labor, slow service, and persistent inaccuracy.
