I like this idea of waving the rabbit over the shelves to see what's missing
or even mis-shelved. As a former Wal-Mart assistant manager often stuck
with the layaway department during Christmas (now longer available), we
would use Telxon scanners to quickly locate items in "bins" (shelves), and
conduct periodic bin inventories.
Are there any libraries that scan periodically their shelves for missing or
misplaced books using such technology? It seems like it would be simple to
implement (provided of course your library had the endless supply of money
that most corporations have=). We would first scan a barcode at the top of
the shelf, for example the range might be 300-398, so you scan two codes,
one indicating that the books on this shelf should be between 300-398, and
the second, the first book scanned should be 300. Then the librarian would
start scanning the books beginning with the first book on the shelf and upon
reaching the end of the shelf scan the last book and a barcode on the shelf
to indicate that the scanner has completed scanning that particular stack.
At the end a report would indicate what books are missing, of those which
ones are checked out, and which ones are lost. It's an easy way to locate
misshelved books as well since the Telxon would indictae whether or not the
book scanned is actually cataloged between 300-398.
It seems like a pilot could easily be conducted if a corporation like Telxon
offered to lend a library refurbushed units. I do realize there are some
opportunities with my suggestion that individual libraries may face (trying
to get tiny little barcodes on the spine of a book for exampe), but I
believe librarians have unique problem solving skills and can find creative
cost-effective solutions to meet their needs.
One last point, I really like the talking rabbit!
Murat
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 10:57 PM, Bernd T. Wunsch <Bernd.T.Wunsch_at_nias.ku.dk
> wrote:
> >The key question is if it reads RFIDs that aren't its own. If you have
> >to use theirs it would be very expensive. Although I was hoping to
> >make an "inventory" system by which you pass your rabbit over your
> >shelves and it tells you what is missing. You could of course do a
> >check-in/check-out system too, for a small library. Indeed, sans
> >computer.
>
> One Nabaztag of Checkin, the other for Checkout.. Would be nice.
>
> But No I have to admit that I haven't looked at the nabaztag RFID
> capabilities at all. Although there has been some work to reverse engineer
> it's message protocols. There's even a proxy, that will allow you to
> interface directly with it, instead of going through the violet servers. So
> perhaps the answer is already out there, on the big wide internets...
>
> -b.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of Tim Spalding
> Sent: Wed 3/25/2009 3:51 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] A Rabbit, a webcam, a Library and a webservice...
>
> I'm waiting for mine so I can play. I ordered a bunch of their
> colorful RFIDs. I didn't really understand the mini-rabbit.
>
> The key question is if it reads RFIDs that aren't its own. If you have
> to use theirs it would be very expensive. Although I was hoping to
> make an "inventory" system by which you pass your rabbit over your
> shelves and it tells you what is missing. You could of course do a
> check-in/check-out system too, for a small library. Indeed, sans
> computer.
>
> Tim
>
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 10:42 PM, Bernd T. Wunsch
> <Bernd.T.Wunsch_at_nias.ku.dk> wrote:
> > Well I wish I could, but the stamp that we got (the little grey rabbit in
> background on the video) doesn't seem to set the rabbit of. Now I'm not sure
> if it's the tag or the Rabbit. But currently it doesn't work :-/
> >
> > But yeah, this would be much more fun using rfids. I guess violet
> already does something like this with the French Childrens books that they
> sell, which the rabbit can read aloud.
> >
> > -b.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Next generation catalogs for libraries on behalf of Tim Spalding
> > Sent: Wed 3/25/2009 3:40 AM
> > To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] A Rabbit, a webcam, a Library and a webservice...
> >
> > Bernd,
> >
> > Did you look into the RFID "sniffer" in the Nabaztag? If a library has
> > RFID in its books, that could moot the need for a barcode scanner.
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Edward M. Corrado
> > <ecorrado_at_ecorrado.us> wrote:
> >> OK, I'm not sure how useful this is for an academic library (though I
> >> imagine it being a hit in the children's dept of a public library),
> >> but this is pretty neat. Is your code available? I'm almost willing to
> >> fork out $99 for one of these just to try it out.
> >>
> >> Edward
> >>
> >> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 9:36 PM, Bernd T. Wunsch
> >> <Bernd.T.Wunsch_at_nias.ku.dk> wrote:
> >>> Hello NGC4Lib,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I have been doing some serious mash-up work, and have created a
> >>> "book-rating-reading-rabbit" for our library. Oh and he twitters too...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> You can see him in action at:
> >>>
> >>> http://blip.tv/file/1915639
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The techy bit:
> >>>
> >>> The Rabbit if of course a nabaztag/tag from Violet.
> >>>
> >>> I used the Amazon AWS to go from the UPC to the desired info.
> >>>
> >>> The barcode scanning comes from barcodepedia.com (I used a slightly
> >>> changed edition of their flash-thingy).
> >>>
> >>> The glue that keeps it together runs on our webserver, and is all
> simple
> >>> php, curl, and the above mentioned flashfile.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> You can try it for yourself at: www.niaslinc.dk/kalle although I you
> >>> won't get to see or hear the rabbit spring into action, he will post
> >>> what he read aloud to his twitter stream at:
> >>> http://twitter.com/kalle_kanin. He also logs any visitors to our
> >>> website: http://www.asiaportal.info
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> I've always wanted a small "magical amazon review box" in my library,
> >>> where you could get extra info just by scanning a book. But I guess I
> >>> had to build one myself before I got it :-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Regards,
> >>>
> >>> - Bernd.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Check out my library at http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding
>
--
Mr. Murat Yazan, MA, MLIS
Received on Wed Mar 25 2009 - 08:26:16 EDT