Western Education Centre

Published on June 25, 2010 under Testimonials

The use of the TagSys RFID Stock Wand and 2CQR WANDA Software at the Western Education Centre, Denmark Hill, London SE5

This Case Study is created from a report dated January 2008 with a foreword and some additional commentary by Mike Chambers, Product Development Manager 2CQR Ltd.

Foreword by Mike Chambers, Product Development Manager 2CQR Ltd.

Careful planning and development of the WANDA Digital Library Assistant software (initial phase) was completed for the TagSys Inventory Wand in Q3 of 2007.

Our customer at Kings College (Western Education Centre, Denmark Hill site) then undertook a careful study of its effectiveness and usefulness. The report which followed is reproduced below and unchanged except that the actual tests employed and results obtained have been moved to Appendix B.

In the 17 months since the publication of this report several changes and upgrades have taken place and certain requirements (e.g. the request for multi-mode operation) have been inserted in our product development road map.
We will ask for a similar assessment of the WANDA 2009 product later this year.

This is our customer’s pragmatic assessment of our product and contains no hype or excessive claims on our (2CQR’s) part. A small section of explanatory notes is included at Appendix A.

Report by Janet Hopcroft, ISC Manager – January 2008.

Introduction

‘Wanda’ is the (RFID) stock control wand produced by Tagsys on behalf of 2CQR. It is used, via a peer to peer wireless connection with a laptop running 2CQR Wanda software. Depending on the mode you are using the wand in the software either stores the barcodes of items ‘read’ by the wand, or compares the barcodes of items on the shelves with a list of ‘wanted’ items in a file on the computer. Items, for the most part books, are read by simply passing the paddle of the wand across the spine at a proximity in which the (RFID) tag in an item can be detected.

Inventory mode

In inventory mode the Wanda software reads in a list of barcodes of books found present on the shelves read with the wand. It produces a list of barcodes in (CSV) format of books present. (CSV) files can be opened using numerous applications including notepad and Excel, which is most useful for analytical purposes.

In its basic state this function could be used for stock counting. In conjunction with a list of books ‘not on loan’ from the library management system (also preferably in (CSV) format) the wand in inventory mode could be used to carry out an automated stock check.

In inventory mode Wanda was able to count stock with levels of accuracy of between 84 and 96% of standard books on the open shelves.

Finding books from Aleph jobs

Once the basic functionality of the wand and software had been established the missing books and holds lists were loaded as reference files onto the laptop used in conjunction with the wand. The files required only a minimum of editing to bring them into the correct CSV format required by the wand software and this could be done in a matter of minutes with little technical knowledge.

Over the course of a week the wand identified numerous items with active holds and missing status from both the open shelves and returned trolleys near the self service machine. When working on the open shelves staff mounted the laptop on a trolley. Accuracy of the wand in this mode is difficult to judge as we cannot judge how many ‘missing’ or ‘on hold’ items were present on the shelves, perhaps misfiled, but not detected by the wand. From the results in test eleven we can, however, assume it is not detecting any hidden missing items.

Conclusion

In conclusion I feel that the stock control wand would be a useful tool in carrying out an automated stock check at a site and would certainly be quicker, less labour intensive and laborious than a manual stock take. If it were to be used for an accurate stock count the undercounting would need to be taken into account.

The wand would be most useful in identifying items generated from Aleph jobs such as missing or holds lists. This would be particularly the case for sites that have longer lists for these jobs as the time taken to upload the files to the wand laptop would be proportionally less of the task as a whole. Use of the wand also means that reshelving trolleys and areas can be checked quickly for such items as it does not rely on items being in classmark order. As we move towards returning at any site it would make sense to begin to amalgamate missing, holds and in transit lists for all sites so material that has not found its way back to the correct home site would be identified as a matter of course.

It does not appear that the wand would be of use in finding items hidden behind shelves and in more devious locations as its range is not large enough to detect these.

Finding a book mode In this mode Wanda can be used to find one or more specified items in a list. This could be a list of missing items or items with holds on them, as identified by the library management system.

Notes regarding Pamphlets

At the WEC pamphlets are shelved in the main sequence. It was suspected that the tags in pamphlets and very thin books might be the ones being missed. This would account for the lower accuracy obtained in tests five to eight, which were conducted on a run of shelves containing proportionately more pamphlets.

To test this a sample of pamphlets present on the shelves in tests five to ten were taken and the capture files for those tests examined to ascertain whether the pamphlets in question had been detected by the wand. 78% of pamphlets in the sample had been detected, proportionately lower than the number of regular books detected. It can therefore be assumed that the presence of a large number of tightly shelved pamphlets or very thin books will lower the accuracy of a stock count or check undertaken with the wand.

Janet Hopcroft
Guy's and St Thomas' Campuses