RFID is helping museums with many challenges

A variety of benefits made possible by RFID

Museums on every continent are finding that RFID can help them in many different ways.

Many art, science and natural history museums are tagging their entire collections with RFID and setting up readers at doorways, warehouse entrances and stockage area doors.

RFID allows staffers to know precisely where every one-of-a-kind masterpiece or precious historical artifact is, at all times – as well as who handled it last and where it was located previously.

This helps to perform audits more quickly and more efficiently, find misplaced items in huge storage areas, keep track of works that have been moved to a temporary display case or special exhibition, and even reduce theft. Staffers don't need to manually type information into a collection management system and can use their time for more important tasks.

But perhaps even more importantly, RFID can help preserve museum pieces: Once tagged, artwork and artifacts don't need to be touched or handled as often. Identification information located on the bottom or back can be "seen" without needing to move the object in question.