As an important identification method, fingerprint recognition has a wide range of applications. To make the fingerprint recognition system of a library more efficient and secure, a recognition technology based on the characteristic search algorithm is proposed, and the performance of the algorithm is analysed. When a reasonable threshold is set, the matching error rate of the algorithm can be controlled at a lower level, and the algorithm can also ensure a higher fingerprint and determine the overall accuracy. At the same time, three other identification algorithms of the same type are introduced: radio frequency fingerprinting, convolutional neural network and local binary pattern. In a comparative experiment, it was found that the characteristic search algorithm model had the highest accuracy, with a value of 94.8%. When dealing with the same amount of fingerprint data, the recognition time of the algorithm model was the shortest. In addition, the area under the curve value corresponding to the receiver operating characteristic curve of the algorithm was the largest, and its value was 0.94. It is well known that the performance of the characteristic search algorithm is optimal and can effectively improve the operation efficiency of a library fingerprint identification system.