Technologies such as RFID have transformed other industries. Is the book industry next?

By James Sturdivant

Leading the way, says Lichtenberg, have been libraries, several hundred of which are already using RFID tags to enable automatic checkout/in and inventory management.

“It allows for better physical management of books,” he says. “A conveyor belt can knock a book into the proper bin. Customers and librarians love it—you have a pile of books, [you] walk up and put them down on [a scanner], and you are instantly checked out.”