A technology that was originally developed for the military during World War II, and has now encompassed all walks of life by making its foray into retail, medical, education, automotives, fast food, travel industry, and so on, is RFID or Radio Frequency Identification.

RFID is basically one of the automatic identification systems like bar codes, smart cards, etc. which helps machines in identifying objects. It consists of a transponder or a tag which has an embedded integrated circuit and an antenna. The IC is encrypted with a unique electronic product code. The antenna allows the tag to receive and respond to radio frequency queries from an RFID transceiver. It thus, transmits the data stored in its IC to the receiver which in turn sends it to a central computer for processing.

New uses of RFID are being discovered every day. Using them in libraries is just one among them. Currently, approximately 120 million media and books in about 500 libraries worldwide are already attached with RFID labels, and this number is still progressing. With the introduction of RFID, the management of libraries is improving drastically. In libraries RFID plays a crucial role in checking the catalogues and allowing the customers to pass by card readers that automatically updates the computer system by synchronizing the ID information on patron