RFID Revolutionizes the Museum Collections Management
RFIDs ability to simultaneously read hundreds of tags in a few seconds provides a unique advantage for tracking museum exhibits. It allows collections staff to track movement and take inventory of artifacts without physically handling them, thus greatly reducing damage to collection items. Besides the reduced handling, the ability to scan multiple items has a positive impact on staff productivity, too. If properly applied, RFID technology can achieve a virtually 100% read accuracy providing obvious advantages over manual methods. Last but not least, RFIDs ability to scan through other materials means that artifacts can be identified touchlessly even while on display. In contrast, a barcode requires line of sight in order to be scanned, which would be unacceptable for esthetic reasons.
RFID for Movement Tracking
Museums that re-arrange their exhibits more frequently can greatly benefit from RFID technology that enables them tracking movements of collections. The actual method of tracking could take on any combination of the following forms:
- Gate readers installed at key doors could monitor the movements automatically
- Hand-held readers connected to Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) could be used by staff to record the movements as exhibits leave or re-enter storage.
- Hand-held readers could be used by staff to record location of exhibits in their final position
RFID for Museum Exhibit Inventory
The physical inventory of a museum collection gains dramatic benefits in speed by using an RFID-based solution. Something that wasn't affordable before any more than yearly, thanks to RFID could now be done on a weekly basis, and even in realtime. In this way discrepancies between your collection management system and your physical inventory would be discovered very quickly, while the whereabouts of the object in question was still fresh in everyones mind, and the object could therefore be tracked down much easier.
As staff pass the RFID handheld reader over the contents of the collections drawer, in addition to scanning the tags attached to each artifact, they also scan a special location tag that is affixed to each drawer. In this way, the system is location aware - it knows what is located where.
Data collected in this way would be automatically downloaded to your collections management software, either on-the-fly through a wireless network, or afterwards, by dropping the RFID reader into a cradle connected to your computer.
RFID for Instant Access to Information
Once a museum collection was labeled with RFID tags, any staff member with a hand-held reader can get instant access to information about any piece of interest. Information such as its home location (needed when putting items away), maintenance history, artist, or any other piece of information that you already have in your database can instantly be displayed.
RFID Can Help Find Misplaced Artifacts
If a specific artifact turned out to have been misplaced, a portable RFID reader can be used to search for that artifact (or artifacts) in your stores. This is also done automatically during the inventory process: the scanner instantly indicates to the user when it detects an artifact with a previously unknown location.
RFID Enables Exciting Potential Future Uses
RFID tagging of museum collections opens the door to exciting new possibilities, such as self-guided museum tours. Users could access detailed multimedia information on works of art via an RFID-equipped PDA simply by scanning an object of interest.
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