What if your city had a Peace and Justice Commission which had the power to approve or deny contacts and vendor purchases based on whether the vendor signed a nuclear-free disclosure form? Well, the City of Berkeley does have such a commission, designed to help Berkeley comply with its Nuclear-Free Berkeley Act and Oppressive State Ordinance.

So here’s the problem: the Berkeley Public Library, which uses a Checkpoint self-checkout system (utilizing RFID, or radio-frequency identification), needs to sign a maintenance contract for the system. However, Checkpoint has outsourced its maintenance to 3M, so the city would be contracting with 3M.

However, 3M has refused to sign the City of Berkeley’s standard forms for contractors. The forms state that contractors do not, and will not for the life of the contract, do “work for nuclear weapons.” Problem time!

The Peace and Justice Commission will not grant a waiver for 3M, although it has granted waivers to other vendors, primarily those working with UC Berkeley. Interestingly, P&J is suggesting the library convert to a bar code system to deal with the issue, thereby completely abandoning the RFID system. The library director is saying that the other option is to purchase an entirely new RFID system, one that offers interoperability with other tags, equipment, and maintenance (and thus vendors). But that would be too expensive.

What a conundrum. This situation brings up so many questions, foremost of which is did anyone at BPL perform an analysis before the large RFID expenditure? Why is staff not on board with the RFID project? (There was a large group of staff and Board of Library Trustees (BOLT) present at the P&J’s waiver-granting meeting who opposed any waiver, and who also promoted the bar code solution.) Shouldn’t interoperability be a consideration when choosing new library equipment and technology? The trend in library automation is certainly in that direction.

I can see both sides of the issue. Berkeley has a commitment to enacting its progressive ideals, and I get that. Still–what a drag to manage a library in the City of Berkeley.