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Answered By: Douglas Stehle Last Updated: Feb 08, 2024 Views: 15
I feel there needs to be some sort of limiting or accountability for the room reservation system. Multiple times, I’ve tried to get a room
Details:I feel there needs to be some sort of limiting or accountability for the room reservation system. Multiple times, I’ve tried to get a room without a reservation when there are many unoccupied. I’ll look at the reservations, and all of the empty rooms are reserved for the entire day, sometimes through the evening (until 10pm) despite no one being there. I’ll occasionally use the rooms only to be interrupted 1-2 hours later by the people who reserved it.
I think that the reservation system is great, however, people should not be able to wantonly reserve a room for 8+ hours when they’re not using it for hours of that time. At time of writing, there are two rooms unoccupied on the 2nd floor that are reserved until after 5pm. If people don’t show up within 15-30 min of the start of their reservation, they should not be able to claim it back. This system should not be abused for people who *might* want to use the room at some point in the day, wasting resources and depriving other patrons of use.
Thank you for the comment. The library will be making changes next year in the user interface and features of the study room reservation system (LibCal).
Regarding the concern you raised, a room check-in requirement will be turned on. We have results from a survey conducted in October with various comments from the student respondents pointing to the same challenge. Confirmation and reminder emails that users receive about their reservations will include a confirmation code that must be submitted within 30 minutes after the start time of any booking once they get into the room. If the check-in code is not submitted, the system will auto-cancel the reservation freeing up most or all of that time slot. Based on other survey results, we are updating the interface to a mobile-friendly/suggestion-based view. Many survey results indicated frustration with the unfriendly nature of the current interface (with the green time blocks, too much scrolling) on both laptops and especially on mobile devices. I hope to turn on the check-in feature before the end of February 2024 if not sooner. Putting the changes in place will take some time. There are QR code signs that need to be placed in each room, email configurations updated, along with testing to ensure it works well before going live.
You can view an example of the future new interface here.
Happy holidays.