The RFID forum was interesting. It was a mixed panel of librarians, privacy advocates, and a techie grad student from Berkeley. I’ve never been to a public meeting like this — the San Francisco Library Commission was there listening to the panel. No action was taken this evening, and no action has been taken so far on the RFID issue except to move forward in considering it.
They have also already put away money for this project — the first year’s funding for the RFID implementation has already been put away. It’s not in their operating budget, but if they decide to move forward with this they will move that money into their operating budget and ask for additional money.
The interesting thing for me was the human issue. I’m fascinated by this topic, but I have always looked at it from a technical and privacy issues stand point. I think, of course, about the impact it will have on people as a whole, but have never thought about individuals on a personal basis. The representatives of the libraries emphasized over and over again the costs — both financial and emotional — of the repetitive motion injuries their employees suffer. I did not write down the numbers of those affected, but it seemed a significant portion (of at least Berkeley’s) library’s funds went into workers’ compensation and / or disability. You tell could from the way the library represenatives spoke, most notably Jackie Griffin, director of the Berkeley Public Library, how emotionally committed they were to their library and the people who worked there. They are also focused on improving the services they provide and are passionate about it.
They, as librarians, are also passionate about protecting our privacy. But being involved as deeply as they are in their respective libraries, they are emotionally vested to improve their services and make work easier and less risky for their employees. It’s very easy to understand why using an RFID system would be advantageous for the SF Public Library — library staff wouldn’t have to scan every book for patrons when checking out. Patrons would check themselves out instead (actually increasing privacy by minimizing third party interaction and viewing of personal data). Managing inventory would be simpler — they claim they can just take a wand (reader) to a stack of books lying on a table and easily find books that aren’t on the shelves when other people want them.
While it all sounds great, I’m wondering how realistic it is that it will work as they think it will. One of the librarians mentioned that the wand reader worked less ideally than the vendor made it sound — tagged books had to be read at a very close distance, and had to be oriented in the same direction in order to read multiple books. What about checking out stacks of books at one time when patrons leave? I bet we’ll still have to scan the books one by one. Which is fine with me. But then, why not improve the current self check out machines? When asked about the self check out machine they currently had their complaints were that it was slow, you had to scan books one at a time, and video and other media had to be handled differently and could not be scanned. Improving those machines would free up librarians to service patrons, cut down on repetitive stress issues, and cost less than upgrading the entire system to use RFIDs.
I understand that it’s more complicated than simply upgrading and improving those machines, though — there’s still the repetitive stress from placing the anti-theft device in every single book, and the issue with shelving and finding books. But RFIDs, while innocuous now, have incredible potential to defrock us of our privacy. Cheerleaders for RFID technology say that our hypothetical concerns are unrealistic and overly paranoid, but there will easily come a time when technology is such that our concerns will not be hypothetical. And there may come a time when they are not overly paranoid either — and if that time comes, I don’t want to have in place the technologies that will make me a vulnerable citizen under an overly watchful eye.
