Daily Archives: May 20, 2005

Indentification via fingerprints seem to be all the vogue of late. And since the story of Naperville Public Library, US Biometrics and their Fingerprints instead of Library Card plan has been commented on at both LISNews and SlashDot, I felt obligated to respond as well. Up until now, fingerprints have been required for everything from selling videogames to checking out library books (Did you remember that?). I gave up my own plans to be a master jewel thief a little over a decade ago when every darn school board I started working for wanted to do a background check. I can almost guarantee that some people will never want to go along with this plan. But on the other hand (no pun intended), some will not see it as a big deal. The downside to our PAMS system is that someone who has forgotten their library card has absolutely no way onto the computer. We empathize with them, but don’t really offer a workaround except for picking up a guest card. We also don’t check out books without the person presenting their card. The cool thing about using fingerprints is they never forget to bring them to the library. Of course, there are some potential downsides.