ALIA ISO RFID Data Model project

Background

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems are now employed in over a dozen Australian libraries and many more are intending to introduce the technology. With careful planning and implementation, the introduction RFID has the potential to provide libraries with productivity benefits, new collection management tools and improved customer service. Unfortunately, international standards have not kept pace with the progress of RFID in the library community and, as a result, interoperability between RFID equipped library services is very limited.

While many vendors are able to supply ISO based RFID tags and readers, the actual method of organising and storing the library and item data within the memory of the tag remains outside of the standard and therefore proprietary to each vendor. To achieve interoperability between different vendor's ISO based systems would require a common method of organising the data on the RFID tags. The format employed in organising tag data is known as the RFID tag data model. The tag data model specifies what data elements the RFID tag will contain, how this data will be arranged and encoded etc.

During the last two or three years this lack of interoperability has prompted many countries around the world to pursue a nationally standardised tag data model for their libraries so as to achieve at least local interoperability. Examples of these data models can be found in Denmark, Finland and The Netherlands. Starting in mid 2005, a working group under the auspices of Standards Australia was formed to examine the needs of Australian Libraries in this context and to produce a report and a set of recommendations. This report was delivered to Standards Australia toward the end of 2006. A copy of the report, together with other relevant documents including a list of the working group members, may be downloaded from http://www.sybis.com.au

While national initiatives are to be commended, clearly an international solution satisfying the needs of all countries and offering global interoperability would represent the ultimate state. With this in mind, in October 2006 members of ISO, the International Standards Organisation voted unanimously to establish a project aimed at finding a solution acceptable to all member nations. The ISO TC 46 / SC 4 / Data Model for use of RFID in Libraries project was formed. The national standards organisations in each country nominated a 'National Expert' to represent their standards and library communities and these experts met for the first time in Denmark during December 2006.

ISO Project Status

At the first ISO meeting there was general agreement that any resulting data model must be sufficiently flexible to allow for differing requirements between (and indeed within) each country. Countries that had already implemented data models wanted to be able to introduce the new ISO model without losing any of the functionality provided by their local initiatives. A solution based on two new standards, ISO 15961 & 15962 (as proposed by the Standards Australia group) was acknowledged to be a sound way to move forward. The first step was deemed to be the preparation of a set of statements or principles for public comment. The minutes from this first meeting, together with other project documents will be made available on the project website which may be found at http://www.bs.dk/standards/rfid/

Funding Australia's Involvement

As the ISO project meetings will be held in Europe there are significant time and travel costs involved for Standards Australia's representative, Alan Butters. To enable ongoing representation in the project, ALIA have agreed to manage a funding project open to all library and commercial organisations to raise the necessary money. As it is in the long-term interests of Australian libraries as well as library RFID vendors to achieve the required interoperability, financial contributions to the funding project will be widely sought. Details of the funding project as well as the contributors will be available shortly on the ALIA website and in the inCite magazine. Contributors to date include VALA, ALIA, Standards Australia, and 3M Australia with hopefully more to come in the future.

Conclusion

Through the excellent work completed by the Standards Australia working group, Australian libraries are in a key position to contribute toward the standard which will eventually emerge from the ISO process and therefore impact all libraries. Libraries should urge their professional associations as well as the commercial organisations supporting our industry to contribute toward Australia's ongoing participation in this vital project.