Abdullah 2011

Library Shelf Management System Using RFID Technology

Ahmad Tarmizi Bin Abdullah Ismarani Binti Ismail Azlina Binti Ibrahim

Mohd Zikrul Hakim Bin Noor Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

E-mail: [email protected]

AbstractThis paper present the library shelf management system. The system was developed using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The research was developed in integrating the RFID system and the creation of Graphical User Interface (GUI) at the host PC. The scope of work of the research is to develop an automatic library shelf management system to assist the librarians for more efficient shelf management to find any misplaced books on the library shelf. GUI for the system was developed using Microsoft Visual Basic.Net. The GUI task is to store details information of the book to the database. Subsequently a Shelf ID was created and coded to the RFID tag. The system then used this code to find any misplaced book on the selected shelf.

Keywords-RFID; shelf management; library; GUI

I. INTRODUCTION

Library management system is a planning system for a library that used to track items, orders made, bill paid and patrons who have borrowed. Library management is essential because library housing thousand of books, pamphlets CDs and others. Library needs a good coordination of information of the entire item above in addition to library management. Shelf management is system that classified all of the books on the shelf in the library. The position of the books on the shelf need to be appropriate or the books will be difficult to be found.

Figure 1. Label Tagging

Currently the approach that is used by the librarians is checking each shelf to find misplaced books. The task is very tedious and a lot of training required. The current method is using a label tagging. Figure 1 above show an example of label that stated the reference number of the book. The label

attached to the book will provide information of the location of the book in the library.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a wireless automatic identification technology that utilizes the Radio Frequency as the medium of communication[1]. With the capability of carrying and retrieving data, RFID offers a wide application in the automatic identification areas[2]. Nowadays, RFID continuously spreads throughout many area of application such as access control, transport payment and healthcares[3]. The implementations of RFID become more common in various industries. One of the early adapters of this technology is library management system[4].

Figure 2. RFID System

Figure 2 above illustrates the basic RFID system. The system consists of tag, reader and host pc. Reader will energize the tag to transmit data it carries and an application in the host pc will manipulate the data.

Figure 3. Conceptual Design

The aim of the research is to develop a shelf management system. The system will assist the librarian to carry out the shelf management process thus reducing human intervention.

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The system employs RFID technology as a medium of an identification technique. Figure 3 above depicts the conceptual design of the system. RFID tag is attached to the book. The RFID reader will scan each book on the shelf. The data acquired will be sent to the host PC to process the data. There will be an audio output mechanism to alert the librarian if there is a misplace book. Database and RFID chip will be used as a storage. A graphical user interface (GUI) is the backbone of the system. Librarian will interact with the system through GUI.

RFID tag will be attached to each book on the library. The tag will carry the specific information of the book. A reader will interrogate each book and check which book is misplaced and notice the user to remove the book from the shelf.

The objectives of the research is to develop a Graphical User Interface (GUI) as an Application Programmable Interface (API) for shelf management system using RFID, to create database that will store crucial information of the books to the RFID tag and to create a shelf identification (ID) code. Subsequently in the shelf management process, the software will retrieve the shelf information from the tag to find any misplaced books so that the librarian can position the book back at the right shelf.

II. BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH The investigation of the usage of RFID technology in

library has been already done in various research and study. For example, Shamsudin et al. (2006) [5] developed RFID Based Intelligent System Books Shelving System. The system uses a handheld scanner as a device to locate misplaced books on the shelf. Software that displayed the status of the books location was also being developed. A rail with was equipped on top of the books shelf. This rail is for the reader to propel and scan all the tag as it moves along the rail. The system using Labview as an Interface and MySql as a database. However, the capability of RFID tag carry certain amount of data is not considered. The RFID system data was check with the database information making the system less efficiency.

RFID tag that can be used as books location system in library was mentions by Choi et al.(2006)[6]. The system developed using handheld reader and each of the books location on the shelf has LED. This LED act as an indicator and it was integrated with the shelf tag. The assumption made in this research is that all the books are in the same size and shape. Therefore, the LEDs will at the fixed position or otherwise librarian need to arrange the books on the shelf accordingly to match the LED position.

Other location system mechanism for library based on RFID technology is investigated by Liang et al. (2007)[7] . It consists of two mode of locating book in library, a single book mode to find the shelf that has the desired book and book list mode to find the misplaced book on the shelf. The system called Book Locating System (Blocs). The proposed method is to place RFID at the side and center position of the books shelf. The system developed by simulating it using Java. The idea is to control the detection rate of the reader from 1 to 10 power level as it will be the boundary for the reader detection range. However, the system not stated which of the RFID frequency level being used.

Jubadi et al. (2008)[8] developed a system to manage and organize theses using High Frequency (HF) RFID technology. The system consists of RFID reader and tag and a Graphical User Interface (GUI). The software used was Visual Basic 6 and Microsoft Office Access 2003. The system lack of functions as book drop system or a circulation process was not in discussion.

The research conducted at UiTM is focusing at High Frequency (HF) range which is operate on 13.56 MHz and give read distance about 1 meter. The shelf management application needs detection range less than 1 meter, so this frequency offers the right characteristic for that application. Passive tag with the capacity of 1024 bit storage was selected. The system will code the book position on the shelf to the chip of the tag. Hence the dependency of database is eliminated. On the other hand, database was develop to store the details information of the books which can be identified by tag ID.

III. PROJECT PLAN

The integration between the RFID system hardware and the host PC was realized by the development of the Graphical User Interface(GUI). The development of the GUI was done using Microsoft Visual Basic. Net.

Figure 4. Project Plan

Figure 4 above shows the project plan of the research. Data were divided into two categories which were details information of the book and the shelf ID. The details information of the book were stored into the database. Subsequently the shelf ID that was represented the book position on the shelf was stored to the RFID chip. This shelf ID will be used as a parameter to check each book on the shelf. If


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there was a misplace book detected, the book must be removed out from the shelf.

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

A. GUI Development

The development of the GUI for the system consists of three main components named Main, Add Record and Shelf Check. Main GUI was created as a home to the whole system. Two other components can be accessed through this GUI.

Figure 5. Main GUI

Figure 5 displays the main GUI. Add Record and Shelf Check button was the access to another two components of the system. Com Port was referred to the serial communication port on a computer. RFID reader was connected to the host PC through serial port. Therefore, correct com port number must be selected to establish the connection. There was two ports listed in figure above. Com 3 was the modem connection for the PC and com 21 was the reader connection. The status of the reader connection can be tested to determine whether the connection succeeded or not.

A message will pop up once the connection between the reader and host pc was successfully established. In contrast if the connection was failed, the message of connection fail , try another port was displayed. If the connection to the reader was tested failed, another comm port in the list must be selected.

B. Data Development

Figure 6. Add Record GUI

The Add record GUI as shown in Figure 6 above was developed to save the data of the book. There were 3 sections as highlighted with the red mark. Read ID section was where Unique ID was retrieved from the tag ID. The details information of the book such as title, author, publisher and edition were stored into database. This details information was represented by the Unique ID of the tag. The position information of the book such as floor, section, shelf and shelf compartment were stored into the tag chip.

1) Database

The development of the database is important since the book will be recognized by the system through the tag. HF RFID tag comes with one of the important characteristic which is each tag has an unique ID. Thus, each book received one ID which was differ with another book. This unique ID will be related to the details information of the book. The database was used by the system to recognize the book through the RFID tag. The database of the system is developed using the Microsoft Office Access 2003.

Figure 7. Database

Figure 7 shows the database that had been developed. Each column represent one book. Unique ID was in the first column followed by the title, author, publisher and edition of the book.

2) Shelf ID Creation

The position of the book was coded into the chip of the RFID tag. The position was divided into 4 main categories; floor, section, shelf number and shelf compartment. Data that was stored into the chip of RFID tag were accorded to these information.

The structure of the data is shown in figure 8 above. Each

of the data regarding to the position of the book were represented by two hexadecimal numbers. Therefore, the numbers will varies from 00 to FF. Total of 32 bits of data

Section Shelf

Compartment

AA BB XX YY

Floor Shelf Number

32 bits data

Database Development

Write Data to tag

Read ID

Figure 8. Data Structure


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were used to store the data. Figure 9 below shows the example of the data stored to the tags chip.

In this example F1 denoted Floor 1 , section EE represented

the Electrical Engineerings section, shelf 01 represented the shelf number and shelf number compartment 01 represented the shelf compartment number. The next application used this data to find any misplaced book on the shelf. Coding the data to the tag means the data was written to the tag. Therefore it is important to acquire the status of the write process. Data write successful popped up if the data was successfully written to the tag. Otherwise, write fail message pop up appeared. The factor that affects the write process is the tag must be placed on the reader, as close as possible to the antenna.

C. Shelf Check

The next part of the GUI was the shelf checker. The purpose of this GUI is to check either the book was at the right location or not. Shelf Number and Shelf Compartment Number that were coded in the tag chip was used as the parameter to the system. The data were compared to the selected shelf number. If the data equal to the selected shelf number it means that the book was in correct position. Otherwise if the data does not equal to the selected shelf number, there was a beep to alert the librarian the book was misplaced.

Figure 10. Shelf Check GUI

Figure 10 depicts the GUI for shelf management during scanning process. Time interval selection was the interval for the application to send a set of command to the reader. This

command was to instruct the reader to scan the tag. Shelf number selection was a set of shelf number that exist in the library. Shelf compartment refers to the compartment on that shelf. The right hand side of the GUI shows the list of the scanned book. Each line on the list represent one book. A message Remove the book popped up when the system find the misplaced book. Librarian must took out the misplaced book. The scanning process then resumes as the librarian click OK button.

V. CONCLUSION The result and discussion discussed in the previous section

gives a clear perspective that all of the objective have been successfully achieved. The book information were successfully stored to the database and to the tag. The interfacing between the RFID system and the application was accomplished. However further study need to be done to find the system best performance in term of the reading process since the system involved in sending and receiving signal and data in a specific time interval.

REFERENCES [1] Sweeney, P.J., RFID For Dummies. 2005: Wiley

Publishing, Inc. [2] Cheng, F. Research for application of RFID in library. in

Computer and Communication Technologies in Agriculture Engineering (CCTAE), 2010 International Conference On. 2010.

[3] Chawla, V. and H. Dong Sam, An overview of passive RFID. Communications Magazine, IEEE, 2007. 45(9): p. 11-17.

[4] Finkenzeller, K., RFID Handbook. 2010: Wiley. [5] Shamsudin, T.M.W., M.J.E. Salami, and W. Martono.

RFID-Based Intelligent Bookcs Shelving System. in RFID Eurasia, 2007 1st Annual. 2007.

[6] Jung-Wook, C., O. Dong-Ik, and S. Il-Yeol. R-LIM: an Affordable Library Search System Based on RFID. in Hybrid Information Technology, 2006. ICHIT '06. International Conference on. 2006.

[7] Kuen-Liang, S. and L. Yi-Min. BLOCS: A Smart Book-Locating System Based on RFID in Libraries. in Service Systems and Service Management, 2007 International Conference on. 2007.

[8] Warsuzarina Mat Jubadi, M.N.H.a.R.O., Development of Smart Label Using RFID to Manage and Organize Theses Collection in FKEE Resource Centre. 2nd Engineering Conference on Sustainable Engineering Infrastructures Development & Management 2008.

Shelf Number

01

Section EE

Shelf Compartment

01

F1 EE 01 01

Floor F1

Figure 9. Example of data


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