Just Books Takes Readers Through Virtual Tour Of Library Premises

While most of us would agree that reading an interesting book put into our hands is quite convenient, exploring a library to locate one often tests our patience.

Just Books library in Bangalore decided to transform this search experience for its readers and visitors. To achieve this, Just Books has tagged all its books using the UHF RFID Library Automation tool from Orizin Technologies. An unmanned kiosk has been deployed outside the library that guides readers in their search for books on the basis of authors and/ or book titles. This guidance was previously provided manually. The books are tagged with RFID chips that keep track of each book’s location in the library, the current reader etc. The entire process has been automated resulting in cost efficiency, time saving, accurate inventory management and scope for better user analysis.

“We tagged approximately 15,000 books in a period of about two-and-a-half months,” says R Sunder Rajan, MD, Just Books. The library has been operational since June 2008. The group of technology professionals instrumental in starting the library had always hoped to build a library model that was different from the conventional library from both the user’s perspective and on a functional basis.

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Unmanned Kiosk Solves Earlier Challenges

“There are three challenges associated with the typical library model (manually operated) – searching for book titles, finding the location of the book in the library and lastly procuring a book that is not a part of the library,” says Rajan.

With the automation, if a typical reader wants to read a book, he uses the kiosk to find the book title along with the rack and shelf where it is positioned, secures the book from its location, comes back to the kiosk and uses its reader to get the book registered, accepts the receipt and leaves. Both the book and the reader’s membership card are tagged with relevant information stored at the back-end.

The unmanned kiosk outside the library equipped with the Library Management Software (LMS) and the tag reader acts as a one-stop shop for all requirements of the reader, right from finding the book of choice to depositing it after reading. The kiosk has a touch screen to help the reader navigate and find the book on the basis of titles and author names. The library is divided into various zones having racks and shelves of different genres of books. The LMS is mapped according to the layout of the library. The LMS is also linked with the inventory and back-end, which helps to point the exact location of the book.

“We also analyse the kinds of requests we get to order book titles that are not a part of our collection. This analysis helps in our procurement process,” says Rajan.

There is also a reconciliation tool that has been jointly developed with Orizin Technologies, which directs the library staff to place the book in the right rack and shelf if it is found in the wrong shelf during their periodic checks. “The scanning device used by the library staff has the master information about the book’s original position. In case if the book is placed on the wrong shelf, information can be triggered from the scanning device about the original position of the book,” explains Rajan. The information travels in real time to the LMS after the reconciliation takes place.

There is also software developed for doing periodic rescheduling of the books as new purchases are made.

Rolling out an Integrated Solution

Just Books evaluated about three vendors for choosing its automation solution. Orizin Technologies bagged the order as it provided an integrated solution comprising RFID tags (used for books and membership cards), unmanned kiosk, scanner device and desktop readers. “Orizin technologies provided us with the right kind of integrated solution. We jointly tagged the books, captured book data and set up the interface of the kiosk with various software components,” elaborates Rajan.

The implementation process was divided into three stages – tagging of the books; entering the book information to prepare a catalogue in the desktop clients; and finally interfacing the catalogue information with the LMS and other software components of the kiosk. “We made sure that most of the books were new; this made the tagging process smooth. Also, the fact that we started the tagging immediately after the library launch helped. This prevented us the trouble of migrating from a typical manually-operated library to an automated library,” says Rajan.

Challenges

One of the major challenges during the implementation arose from the strong range of the radio frequency of the RFID tags. “Sometimes the reader installed in the kiosk would read the tags of the books held by more than one individual waiting in the queue. Initially, customers were educated about standing at a particular distance from the kiosk. The issue was finally resolved by building an enclosure in front of the kiosk,” says Rajan.

Benefits

Tagging of the books will allow Just Books to scale its operations without additional staff procurement or cost. “Just Books offers almost 15,000 books to its readers. Even if we considerably increase the number of books on the shelves, our cost of operation will hardly increase due to the automation,” says Rajan. Accuracy and efficiency of operations is another advantage which arises from the automation of traditionally manual functions which in turn negates chances of error.