How does the library borrowing system work? and how come even if there is no obvious metal insert in the book those gates still know when and when not to beep if the book has or hasn’t been borrowed?
In: Technology
The piece of metal at one time was hidden behind the punch-card-pocket inside the cover. So that there was only one commissioning step, install the self-adhesive pouch and done.
I have not been to a library in a long time I’m sure there are various systems now.
I work at a city library. They are RFID tags that get deactivated at checkout. Much like retail stores. Just an adhesive programmable RFID tag.
I used to work at a library for many years. One of my jobs was to put this tape along the inner binding that was magnetized. When a patron brought the books to the counter to check out we would rub them on this metal plate to demagnetize them.
When bringing them back in we’d run a magnet along the binding to reactive it.
Companies actually also sell dummy sets of security gates, just for the deterrent effect. Give it a try!
What are you talking about? I’ve literally never seen metal detectors at a library
Probably the same as retail stores sticking their security tags on things. The tags themselves look like barcodes but underneath them there is a magnetic strip. They probably dont have barcode like tags but the idea is the same.
Answer: They actually have the metal inserts you think aren’t there. They are usually concealed as a small stick w the magnetic strip on it in the spine of the dust jacket, or under an extra adhered sheet in the front or back of the book.
In highschool i took the security tags out of a few xboxgames i got at the bargain bin and i stuck them under the cart for the projector, and for a few weeks every time someone rented a projector the alarms would go off
I think they have some sort of magnet, I used to work in my high school library and before we checked books out to other students we had to rub the binding against some metal… demagnetizing block? Thing?
Edit: after reading the comments I finally understand what I was even doing, 9 years after the fact 😌
Do you know how if you hold a tuning fork near your mouth and sing the right note, the fork will sing back? The books contain very thin “tuning forks” that look like stickers. The scanner you walk through emits a tone that causes any near by “tuning forks” to ring at that same frequency. The scanner then listens for the resonating forks and sounds an alarm if it hears any. You can’t actually hear the frequency though because it is done with radio frequencies.
Edit: It occurred to me that I didn’t actually answer ops question. Basically when you check in or out the book it runs over a large magnet what wacks the tuning fork into and out of tune.
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