Finally, I am asked, which of these library technologies will most improve libraries for the librarians and which would improve libraries most for the patrons. I think  RFID could do a lot for librarians and library staff while OPAC has already done a lot of patrons and will continue to do so if the trend toward emulating commercial search engines (Yahoo and Google) continues to make them even more user-friendly.

RFID

I think RFID is ready to revolutionize the way libraries are run today. I think it will make the lives of librarians easier, except for the librarians it threatens with unemployment. So many tasks that were carried out in the past have been changed by the integration of library systems, but those were administrative functions while RFID streamlines and simplifies actual operations in a library. RFID tags outlast the current electromagnetic strips used in libraries now and library staff members claim that they appreciate the way RFID can be used remotely so they do not risk repetitive stress injuries from handling books to check them out with the current barcode reader system.  While the barcodes need a good alignment to read the codes, RFID readers can read the tags remotely. The main qualms that have been mentioned with RFID is the maintenance of patron confidentiality, which is a part of the ALA Library Bill of Rights and currently some libraries believe that there is no problem since library RFID readers can’t be used beyond the confines of the library, but there is the suspicion that in an emerging police state, somebody other than the library could obtain readers outside of the library. However, these arguments are at the time being outside the scope of this course.

OPAC

I think OPAC will do the most to improve libraries for library patrons. They have made the task of searching for books so much easier than they were even 20 years ago. The fact that a patron can seek out a book and see if a library has it, which branch the item is located. I do not think I have ever talked to a reference librarian (other than my friend, Brian Weaver who was a reference librarian before heading SFPL’s digitization project) and web OPACs mean I will never have to. Not that I don’t like librarians, I just feel like an ultra geek checking out books on topics like ancient mystery cults, encaustic portraits of Fayum, the origins of the Dark Ages, the crimes of imperialism and colonialism, church history, space colonization, history of the Russian Revolution, biographies of Roman emperors, bird watching, corporate crime, numismatics in antiquity, economic development, Nineteenth Century political art, political science, the art of J.A.D. Ingres, Goya and Edward Hopper, pre-Christian paganism, and the history of science and technology. Like so much these days, I prefer to do my browsing online and reserve the materials I’m interested in. For patrons, having access to a library’s catalog from the comfort of home is a vast improvement over the way people had to find library materials in the past.

The combination of ILS and RFID have made self-checkout possible and cut down on wait times formerly associated with standing in line waiting for a librarian to check out your books. The trend toward making libraries even less of a hassle is a boon for patrons and a boon for libraries as less hassles means people are more willing to go to libraries, especially if they know the materials they are looking for are already there for them.

Integrated Library Systems (ILS)

What is it?

ILS began after various aspects of library tasks had already begun being automated by the 1960s. With the introduction of a machine readable catalog, libraries quickly caught on that this could be used to automate circulation, cataloging and check out. Soon library staff started thinking about ways to make automated library systems able to reference each other, or making them more able to cooperate between one system and another, or in other words, integrated. There are core modules for the library catalog, circulation, acquisitions, serials (unless it’s the version of SIRSE at Cochise College) and additional modules include, but are not limited to: available holdings, bookings, materials booking, binding, interlibrary loans and administration, pretty much any function in a library that doesn’t involved lifting or moving books.

How is it used in libraries?

This seems to be the brains behind the library, enabling patrons and staff members to search titles and their availability or reserve them or put them on hold. On top of a high degree of automation of tasks that library staff might have previously found redundant, ILS is great for recording transactions and generating reports and stats on library transactions. In the words of Chris Kliess, ILS transforms libraries from being a collection of print materials to an organization of intellectual content for purposes of research through acquisition and dissemination. (Source: http://www.slideshare.net/ckiess/introduction-to-the-integrated-library-system-ils-6590943)

ILS provides the advantages of office automation to libraries such as having defaults and templates, reduction of redundancy, errors and labor costs, they give easy access to data that used to take until the end of library hours to tabulate, and most conveniently, they are able to record transactions and generate reports on them.

What is the expected social impact of this technology?

Running a library has been made easier with the automation of tasks formerly done by library staff and also ILS can automatically document library activities in ways that a person cannot do very easily. Furthermore, ILS can generate statistics on all library functions, like circulation (which books get checked out how frequently?) the checking in of new periodicals, which was probably a massive headache to do manually; spontaneous inventory control, and speeding up paperwork considerably. 

Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC)

What is it? 

OPAC was the first portion of ILS to be made visible to the public. During the mid-1980s, libraries began augmenting their card catalogs with a computer system that carried out the tasks of a card catalog and much more. OPAC could also connect users to interlibrary loans, thereby expanding the collection of one library with another. OPAC was able to use data from the MARC catalog to display title, author, and subject. The introduction of OPAC in public libraries was the general public’s exposure to MARC as it translated MARC data in a manner that made its data accessible. OPACs are able to deal with aspects of the “vocabulary problem” by providing suggested topics (much like the “see” and “see also” comments in the old cards and unlike the card catalog), can be searched by keywords.

How is it used by libraries? 

They seem to have supplanted card catalogs in libraries entirely, plus the emergence of protocol has given OPACs the ability to search the catalogs of other libraries or other academic institutions’ collections. There are many commercially available variations of OPAC that are more suitable for different regions or different categories of users like SIRSE/DYNEX (so wonderfully illustrated in Macrovision for IRLS 571 students), TALIS (in the UK), Endeavor, Exlibris, OLIB, InnOPAC, Virtua and others. In academic libraries OPACs can be used to reserve course materials for instructors and can be organized by classes or instructors.

What is the expected social impact of this technology?

In the Butterfield reading for this class, there is mention development in the direction of web-based OPACs and wireless public access catalogs, and already we have the ability to search library catalogs online from our homes, negating a trip to the library until we are certain they have the books we want in the stacks. However, the “online” in the original definition of OPACs, is what would now be classified as an intranet or VPN in modern parlance. In fact in researching for this essay, I naturally looked at the bastion of truthiness, Wikipedia, which has a whole subject heading about the decline and stagnation of OPACs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPAC#Stagnation_and_dissatisfaction)

But I think the stagnation and dissatisfaction are about the earlier, “purer” versions of OPAC which pales in comparison with the tricks and capabilities that can be rendered with a modern web search engine, which has such features as ranking hits by relevance to the query and uses histories of similar searches in an effort to weed out irrelevant hits. Once the technology of commercial search engines is combined with OPACs, libraries are going to get another boost as patrons will have a lot more health in tracking down books on the subjects they are interested in. The online catalog at the UA library seems to have some features in line with a commercial search engine, it seems to rank titles by relevance when searching by subject.

Integrated Library Systems (ILS)

Blogs
What are they? 

Blogs, or more formally, web logs, are periodically updated websites where an author writes about topics of personal interest. There are three aspects of blogs, frequency, brevity and personality. The tools made available through mass media companies’ websites have greatly reduced the amount of work involved in creating and maintaining a blog and consequently have made blogging a mass cultural phenomenon. Supposedly a layperson can set up a blog in five minutes and the hardest work seems to be picking a style template. Blogs consistently feature headlines, permanent links, topics, a search feature within the blog and archives. In terms of editorial content, blogs recognize that their writers are being wholly subjective and are expressing their opinions.

How are they used in libraries?

Certain librarians have taken the bit in their mouths in using blogs as a means of publicizing library new acquisitions and social events. Libraries also have organizational blogs, internal communication forums at an informal level, usually contained within a firewall and segregated from public view.

In the realm of public blogs, public libraries have been energizing their communities and expanding interest in their collections.

Here in Tucson, Pima County Public Library staffer Karen Greene, an acquaintance of this author, really took a lot of initiative in using blogs and other social media as a huge method of publicizing library acquisitions as well as opening up the blog to other embryonic uses of web 2.0 to publicize libraries, including user authored reviews in the style of the Amazon.com customer reviews of books, then energizing folks whose recent contact and involvement with libraries by hosting new and topical events at the PCPL like the series of “Makers” events. This has used a new widespread interest in crafts as an opportunity to organize and host craft-related events at various locations in the PCPL. Although most people notice the rise of the web has given rise to a boatload of digital gaming and other computer related hobbies, it has also revitalized tons of more traditional analog hobbies as hobbyists are able to share their progress and challenges as well as finished projects with their own blogs. One PCPL Makers event focused on knitting, another on Japanese animated Sci-Fi (“animé”) and affiliated hobbies (cartooning, creating costumes based on anime characters, building models of the robots or spaceships, creating original comics) and another for amateur musicians. This author was present at the anime-fest in late July of 2013 and had never seen so many adolescents and young adults at a library event in his life. Although this author was disappointed that there was no Makers event involving a specific red wax-sealed brand of bourbon.

Karen Greene left PCPL for greener pastures, but her idea for a library public blog has split into six separate library blogs, which can be viewed here:

http://www.library.pima.gov/contact/social.php#blogs

What is the expected social impact of this technology?

As seen with the “Makers” events above, blogs have gone far beyond the geeky stereotype of being some kind of online fanzine about the online world and has really invigorated all kinds of non-digital activities, or as Trevor Smith said, "Internet that's about the internet." In terms of libraries, it has created more outreach than any mailed out newsletter can possibly do and has brought more and more people into libraries wishing to check out materials on their widely varied interests. I would think that a library blog would get a lot more response than just a printed library newsletter, as it would be immediate and it is more actively read than a print newsletter. I think public blogs done by the right librarians would attract a lot of patrons to come to the library to check out new acquisitions.

Welcome to my new awesome blog! This is starting out as a blog for my IRLS class at UA, but we'll see how long I can keep at it!
Our first topic is RFID and how they are used in libraries.

What is it? 

RFID is radio frequency identification, according to the readings this is the latest iteration of IFF technology, a wartime technology developed to determine if an aircraft in flight was friendly or enemy (IFF stands for Identification, Friend or Foe) where each plane carried a device which, when “pinged,” would give out a signal at a specific frequency, where the planes of the Allied air forces had chosen a predetermined frequency to identify their friendlies and all aircraft that did not “check in” at that frequency were immediately targeted by air defense. Likewise an item bearing an RFID tag will also ping back to a reader which can determine where the item is and check what that object is.

RFID consists of three parts, the tag, an antenna and a reader. In library use, the tag is generally an inert object (although there are RFID tags that are “active,” but more costly) that responds to the reader. The antenna is attached to the tag and catches the signal from the reader. The reader sends out signals, which are caught by the antenna and reads the ping-back and determines what that item is as well as where it is.

Above we see the components of the tag unit. The actual tag is the tiny part on that white background in the center. The labyrinth-like spirally square is the antenna.

How is it used in libraries? 

It is used to track assets and inventory, be they books or equipment in a manner that could not be dreamed about two decades ago. RFID gives libraries the following capabilities: circulation management, staff processing, shelf management readers, theft deterrence gates, self-checkout and return drops as well as sorting stations.

What is the expected impact of this technology? 

The amount of labor saved as well as the mode of inventory control means that some degree of RFID will be ubiquitous in libraries in the near future. RFID provides libraries with productivity gains while enhancing customer service. It will streamline acquisition, cataloging, shelving, checking out, checking in, inventorying and re-shelving physical materials.