New technology at Montgomery’s Public Libraries is tracking books on the shelves.

Thursday, Friends of the Library presented a check for fifty thousand dollars to help pay for the new Radio Frequency Identification program.
The money will cover the cost of RFID tags and security gates.

When you enter the J.H. Morgan library, you’ll notice something new at the door, security. It’s not designed to keep you out, but it is a way to keep unchecked books from leaving. Last year nine thousand dollars in books just vanished from library shelves.

Mayor Todd Strange, City of Montgomery, says “We’ve had this ongoing issue of books just kind of walking off the shelf.

Now the library is relying on RFID technology to track books. Each book gets a tag and each tag gets scanned when you check out.

If you try to leave without properly checking out a book, Jaunita Owes, Executive Director, Montgomery, City-County Library, says, “We put those at each of the entryways it’s kind of like what they use at department stores we tag everything so when you go out and the book has not been checked out properly then an alarm goes off.”

The new technology provides another benefit: self check out. You can swipe your library card at a kiosk, scan your books and get a receipt.

The technology reads the RFID tag and associates it with you. Head librarian Tim Berry says self check out is ten times faster than checking out at the circulation desk.

Tim Berry, Head Librarian, J.H. Morgan Library, says, “If you have ten booksif they’re doing them at the circ desk generally they’re going to be doing them one at a time and they have to scan each individual bar code doing them with self check simply place the books on the pad and it checks.”

In the past when the library took inventory, they had to scan a bar code on each individual book. Now with the RFID technology they can run a wand over a whole row of books and capture all the information at once.

“Bar codes can sometimes become damaged or even torn away rfid code however as long as the code is on there the date is going to be good and the machine will read it you’re not subject to human error,” said Berry.

Most of the inventory at Morgan and Lowder libraries is already tagged. At the end of the five year project, librarians plan to have all of the library's half a million books tagged.

More than thirty thousand books are checked out from Montgomery public libraries each month.