Smart Cards in Hotels

I was asked to do a little research on this subject. I came across numerous companies that offer all sorts of electronic locks, RFID (radio frequency identification) solutions, wireless solutions...

That's all nice, but I'm more interested in technical details of it all. So, when working in VB6, what would be the steps in creating an application that would register a smart card being inserted in an electronic lock? I'm asking this here, because I was unable to find any technical details, source code examples, even applications examples.
So if anyone has some experiences to share, or know something more, please share :)

It all depends on how the hardware (locks) is connected to the computer running your software.

That is my problem. I never had any experience in programming applications that are supposed to communicate with hardware, so I'm not really familiar with ways hardware ( in my case electronic locks) can be connected to computer with my application.
So I'd like to know my options first, before I make any suggestions to anyone.

Your options will be directed by the chosen hardware. There are many ways hardware can communicate with a computer, RS232 (serial) port, LAN, USB etc. It would be good to familiarize yourself with the hardware and the communication protocols it uses first.