Introducing RFID Technology for Managing the Next-Generation Smart Library Systems and Services : An Overview

RFID Technology has been used and developed for more than 50 years; first by Harry Stockman in 1948 and its application has been commonly used around us. In today's information society the librarians have a great responsibility to organize and manage the knowledge centre due to exponential increase the volume of information which leads to the information explosion. Libraries have been seeking technological support to improve their organizational setup for providing effective customer services and also manage various services. Now libraries and information centers have started using Radio Frequenct Idintification (RFID) systems to replace their electro-magnetic and barcode systems in the late 1990s. The purpose of a RFID system si to enable data to be transmitted by a mobile device, called a tag, which is read by a RFID reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application. The use of RFID in tracking and access applications first appeared during the 1980s. RFID quickly gained attention because of its ability to track moving object. As the technology is developed more pervasive and possibly invasive uses for RFID tags are in the works. Across the globe, tye major performance challenges faced by the RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) Technology are uncertainty occurring in RFID data, RFID Reader waiting for time overhead and tag collisions. These issues provide a strong resistance to the technology in performing up to the best of its capabillities. RFID Technology is considered as "the next-generation technology" which has been used in many technical and academic libraries since the technology enables the optimization of multiple library process through the improvement, the automation, or even the elimination of existing process and the emergence of new process called "intelligent process" or "smart process:, which are automatically triggering actions or events. This paper describes about the RFID Technology, its components, services and also represents the most promising benefits from RFID Technology in library and information centers. The paper also highlights the present scenario of RFID Technology application in Indian libraries and information centers and proposal to introduce this technology on more and more academic libraries across the North-East Regioon of India in particular and rest of India in general