A Design and Development of Library Resources Management System on Personal Digital Assistant and RFID Technology

Abstract

- RFID technology has many applications nowadays. One of them is the application of RFID technology in the library. The use of RFID technology for libraries does not only help automate borrowing and returning library resources, but also help prevent book stealing at the exit gate and improve the library resource management to be more convenient and faster. Even though the main library at Kasetsart University has been employing RFID technology for its library resources circulation and resources theft detection, tasks related to shelf management remains un-automated. Through librarian interview and personal observation, it was found that, in order to perform an inventory check of its resources on shelves, librarians need to take those resources from the book shelves to a cart, bring them to a nearby station where the resources are read by an RFID reader. After that, the resources are put back onto shelves where they originally belong in the same order on the shelves. Moreover, searching resources on shelves must be done manually by locating resources by their call number and title, thus making it time-consuming. Lastly, ordering resources on shelves still was not taking advantage of RFID technology. Books must be ordered by manually sorting the call numbers. All of these problems lead to the inefficiency in shelf management, and, ultimately, unsatisfied customers. As a result, this research addressed these issues by designing, developing, and implementing a wireless mobile application that took advantages of RFID technology, and that was operated on Windows Mobile 2003 and newer devices. The application was developed using Microsoft Visual Studio C++ 2005 and Microsoft Windows Mobile Software Development Kit 5.0. The RFID reader used during the development of this application operates at 13.56 MHz frequency, was handheld type, and communicated with the application via Bluetooth interface. The application is divided into 4 parts based on its functionality. This includes book shelf inventory checking function, item search function, shelf ordering function, and system configuration setting function. After testing the program by comparing with requirements gathered from the librarians, the application was tested by researcher and later evaluated by the librarians for its functionality, reliability, and user interface design. Evaluation results show that librarians were generally satisfied with the application because of its ease of use, speed, and, most importantly, problem solver. This application could help librarians save time by up to 94% and costs by up to 80% compared to their current method of manual operations. However, the program could still be enhanced, for example, by improving its looks such as font size, using different themes, and directly connecting with the library database to provide better information, such as correct book location in shelf ordering function.