Next Generation Library: Automatic book management system withubiquitous sensors
Ismail Arai, Yuuki Uranishi, Muneyuki Sakata, Kazutoshi Fujikawa, Hideki Sunahara, and Kunihiro Chihara
Graduate school of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST)
8916-5 Takayama Ikoma, Nara, 630-0192 Japan
Email: {ismail-a, yuuki-u, muneyu-s}@is.naist.jp, fujikawa@itc.naist.jp, suna@wide.ad.jp, chihara@is.naist.jp

I. I NTRODUCTION
Ubiquitous environment is supposed to show various automation system according to increase in miscellaneous sensors. For example, when a user puts a book out from bookshelfin a library, the user wants the ubiquitous environment toproceed with checkout automatically. Also, a user can return abook by adverse action in such a Next Generation Library[1].
Furthermore, the librarians can devote themselves to theirprimary work such as helping a user to ﬁnd books and otherdocuments. To realize the Next Generation Library, a systemshould observe location of users and books in the real world.
By the way, an existing library has ceiling cameras for security,and RFID (Radio Frequency Identiﬁcation) tags embedded
into books to manage books quickly. Therefore, we propose an
automatic book management system utilizing existing devices
in a library. There are two challenging issues. One is how totrace the user through cameras. The other is how to trace abook even though the camera is located far from it.
• A function of tracing a user
We utilize an object recognition technology based onimage processing to trace a user. It extracts a frame of
the user by background subtraction and labeling method.
Then, it traces a person by nearest neighbor method
for median point of each frame. Therefore, this method
doesn’t need to attach a transmitter to a user. When auser enters a library by using his/her contactless ID card,a function for tracing users starts with binding user-ID
and the moving user.
• A function of tracing books
It’s difﬁcult to trace by pixels of a book less than that ofa user. First, we embed an RFID reader in a bookshelf tocheck whether a book is in a bookshelf or not. Then, webind a book and a user when a user takes a book in/out.
Also, we utilize location based P2P agent network (PIAX[2]with LL-net[3]) to access each sensors by sensors’ location andsemantics.

Fig. 1.

An overview of the automatic book management systemdoesn’t have to bring books to the librarian to borrow/returnbooks. We let visitors experience above ﬂows by using theprototype of an automatic book management system.
III. D EMO R EQUIREMENTS
We need a space (2m x 5m), a desk (90cm x 180cm), apower supply (an AC outlet, 1500W) and a channel assignmentof 802.11b/g. Since the demonstration works on a private
network, we don’t need Internet connection.
IV. C ONTRIBUTION
We conﬁrm that the system reduces users’ and librarians’tasks for book management by implementing prototype. To develop a prototype system, we (network and image processingresearchers) discussed how to construct the automatic book
management system with the existing facility in a library.
By adding RFID readers to the entrance and bookshelves,
this automatic book management system works in existing libraries. We need more discussion with visitors of Percom2007
to improve the proposed system.
SHORT BIO OF KEY PERSON

II. A PPLICATION
Fig.?? shows an overview of the automatic book management system. The camera sensor located near a user extracts
a frame of the user as soon as the user puts contactless IC
card on the RFID reader. The user in the library is traced bymultiple cameras. Each book has an RFID tag, and a bookshelf
has a built-in RFID tag reader. The RFID tag reader observes
taking books in/out. In addition, a user who takes and returns
a book can be recognized by cameras. Therefore, the user

Ismail Arai is PhD candidate at NAIST since spring 2004.
His research interests are Information retrieval utilizing metadata of the Web, Context-Aware system, and P2P network.
R EFERENCES[1] “Next Generation Library,” http://inet-lab.naist.jp/˜ismail-a/nglibrary/.
[2] “PIAX,” http://www.piax.org/.
[3] Y. Kaneko, K. Harumoto, S. Fukumura, S. Shimojo, and S. Nishio,“A location-based peer-to-peer network for context-aware services in aubiquitous environment,” SAINT-2005 Workshop, February 2005.