Development of radio frequency identification based library management and anti-theft system: a case of east African community region

Abstract

Radio Frequency Identification Systems are becoming very useful and helpful in our daily life due to their advantages such as reduction of human error, theft prevention, time-consuming reduction, the auto-identification of targeted objects and data collection, find easily misplaced items as well as automating the processes business. Radio Frequency Identification systems have been applied in different areas including in library to manage items and library operations. Different approaches have been adopted to increase the efficiency of library management system in the East African region unfortunately, some challenges including theft of library item, pages removal, non-customer satisfaction, high cost of used system are persisting. To address the challenges an RFID system has been developed for East African Community Library. It used Ultra High Frequency (UHF) RFID readers and tags capable to send and receive data at a read range of 6m. The aim of this system is to speed up all library transactions, improve customer’s satisfaction and keep a track of all library items. It enabled also librarians to have videos records of all library operations which were used to identify page removing actors and other unwanted behavior. The developed system will facilitate users borrowing and returning library items with the help of RFID-enabled modules without more human intervention and issue an alert if a non-issued item is detected when user cross the library entrance or exit. The Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) camera and time-stamped access of library books provided with this developed system, will help to have video records of all library operations and facilitate to detect the actioner of the pages removal.