Multnomah County's Library Steps up Security

Apparently Multnomah County's library books haven't had any sort of security system in them for almost thirteen years. Wow.

The county has decided to install Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the library books and hope to have the task completed by then end of 2010. At first I thought the library didn't have any system, but supposedly they just turned what they did have off when there were too many false alarms.

The move comes four years after a police officer discovered hundreds of stolen library CDs and DVDs at a patron's home and the public learned that staff annoyed by repeated false alarms had turned off the few security gates that existed in library branches. The discovery led to a study of library security released two years later that showed massive annual losses.

How many false alarms make you turn off security gates? For a while, I couldn't go into a local pharmacy in a certain pair of jeans because they would make the gate alarms go off. That bad?

Here is some info in the article regarding RFID that I found helpful:

RFIDs are small devices about the size of a nametag sticker that adhere to books, CDs and the other materials. They've been gaining popularity among libraries nationwide for the last five years and have been used in libraries in Europe even longer.

The tags store and retrieve data and contain antennas that enable them to respond to radio-frequency queries. They can't be removed from items without damaging them and will trigger an alarm at the door if the item isn't checked out.

RFIDs are favored because they're much more accurate than the magnetic strip systems often used by libraries.

Learning is fun.