Performance testing is an integral aspect of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) application, with users’ anticipation of near 100% accuracy rate. A review of a number of academic research databases has shown sparse empirical research on RFID testing in a library environment. This study investigates factors that may affect the read rate of an inventory reader in a library. The factors investigated in this study were read distance, tag location, number of sweeps and sweep direction. This methodology applied a systematic approach to investigate the performance of two inventory readers using design of experiment. A 2k–1 fractional factorial experiment, where k is the number of factors investigated, was used to determine the relationship between independent factors (k = 5) and the performance of the RFID reader, measured by the read rate. It is anticipated that the findings may help researchers and library practitioners to understand and further investigate methods to optimise the performance of the reader and spur the need for investigation of other factors.