As of this Monday, we will officially ‘go live’ with RFID technology at EPS and Central (although EPS has technically been operating with RFID systems since Wednesday).
As we have finished tagging the EPS and Central Libraries (excluding Level 4) we have been ‘security blasting’ the collection. The retrospective tagging process creates tags with an ‘initialised’ status; it is necessary to change them to ‘secure’ to ensure that any unissued items will set off the security gates.This involves scanning shelves of books using a wand attached to the tagging trolleys, which activates the security feature of the RFID tags. When a secure tagged item is issued, its security status will flick to ‘initialised.’ When the item is checked back in its status will revert back to ‘secure’. The EPS and Central Library collections have now been fully secured. Although we have finished tagging the Law Library and Commerce Collection, it will not be security blasted until right before RFID goes live in this library (approximately Easter).
FE Technologies were onsite this week to provide training in using the self-check machines and circulation assistants and many staff attended this training. One point emphasised was that our Horizon processes remain the same and that the RFID technology ‘piggy-backs’ onto Horizon. Therefore, if during the next couple of weeks you come across any problems with issuing using the RFID Circulation Assistant, you can always issue items on Horizon with a wand/scanner. However, please contract Library IT with any problems that arise as soon as possible.
A reminder to staff working in the EPS and Central Libraries that items with a yellow dot stuck on the spine have not been tagged (for various reasons, including multiple barcodes and no space to put a tag) and must be issued through Horizon using the barcode.
The tagging of Level 4 of the Central Library and the Education library will continue next week with morning and evening shifts, albeit with a much smaller crew of taggers. We are also looking to begin tagging the Macmillan Brown Library collection in the near future.
From next week I will be working mostly evenings (but will still be working on tagging project) so may take a while to respond to any RFID-related emails. Anything urgent should be direct to Library IT in the first instance.
Fiona T