ISO 28560, the long-awaited standard for RFID tags in libraries, has this week passed the last remaining obstacle to final publication by securing 100% positive votes in the ISO ballot. It has been a long process.
Celebration is due, but it may be a little muted. First of all, it isn't really an international standard since it comes in three parts, two of which are alternative ways of encoding a standard data set: one based on the fixed-format Danish Standard; the other a more flexible format which is likely to be adopted in the English-speaking world and elsewhere - and certainly in the UK. Secondly, despite having been technically stable for more than a year and in no serious doubt of not being voted through, editorial delays at ISO have encouraged and enabled some libraries to invest in supposedly compliant RFID implementations which it transpires were not. Thirdly, publication of the standard - when it comes - is only the beginning of the long road to interoperability of library RFID systems, which will only happen when the hardware and software of the various manufacturers of RFID systems becomes compliant with the standard: that process can only properly begin now.
Nevertheless, we are delighted by the news, especially because the BIC/CILIP RFID in Libraries Group has been at the centre of UK input to the standard. This group includes all the major RFID companies - as well as librarians and other systems and service suppliers - and has been the necessary and only focus for establishing a UK position on library RFID. We have been able to commit to ISO 28560-2 as being the UK's preferred format for tag structure and content; we have published a UK profile which identifies the elements recommended for use in UK implementations; and we have published several important pieces of advice and guidance on implementation and compliance. Our next steps are to publish guidance notes on implementing the UK profile - there is one piece of that jigsaw which needs to be fitted in before we can do that - and a more detailed best practice guide for adopters of the standard. Thanks are due to Martin Palmer (chair of the BIC/CILIP group), Alan Hopkinson, Paul Chartier, Mick Fortune and Simon Edwards for their contribution to all this work.
As a postscript, I should say that there has been much debate about whether implementers of RFID technology can be sure that tags they apply do comply with the standard. It is heartening to know that the major RFID suppliers - members of the RFID Alliance - are getting together to peer-test each other's tags. In what has been a notoriously competitive industry in the past, this signal of collaboration is a most encouraging marker for the future.
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