[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Booking Equipment or Rooms on Evergreen

[David Fiander]

Yes, Innovative Millennium has a booking function that allows staff to
reserve items in the future. One of the branches at my library uses it
to reserve videos for students who want to use them in class. When an
item is reserved, somebody who attempts to check the item out now will
get a shortened borrowing period, to make sure that the booked item is
back for the reserved time.

We tried to use it for booking rooms and other types of things, but
found that it didn't really work that well, for a bunch of different
reasons. The biggest one is that if you have a bunch of rooms which
are all pretty much interchangeable, and you just want to find a free
room for a given time slot, you end up navigating around a lot.
Google calendar or some other corporate calendaring system will
probably work better for that sort of thing. If you want to let
authorized users book rooms for themselves, then that might be tricky
with a stock sort of system.

- David

On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 1:58 PM, David Kane <dkane at wit.ie> wrote:
> Thank you Jason.
> On Innovative's Millennium, you can do this.  I don't know about any open
> source projects that do this.  I will say that I know of cases where
> Google's Calendar application is used.  Just a random relevant thought - the
> data import/export format for Google Calendar is open.  This would make it
> easy to publicize any booking information.
> Best,
> David.
>
> 2008/11/15 Jason Etheridge <jason at esilibrary.com>
>>
>> On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 9:02 AM, David Kane <dkane at wit.ie> wrote:
>> > I was wondering if it is possible to book a resource for a discreet
>> > period
>> > of time.  For example, 'book a multimedia PC between 1 and 2 p.m.' or
>> > book a
>> > room for a meeting etc.
>>
>> Hi David, there's no booking or reservation system like that in EG
>> today, though I believe there are folks who want to sponsor the
>> development of such.
>>
>> > Is this possible now, or can any developers tell me whether this kind of
>> > functionality is within easy reach?
>>
>> Are there any other open source projects that do this?  We might be
>> able to integrate with them or leverage their code.
>>
>> --
>> Jason Etheridge
>>  | VP, Community Support and Advocacy
>>  | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Evergreen Experts
>>  | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
>>  | email:  jason at esilibrary.com
>>  | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com
>
>
>
> --
> David Kane
> Systems Librarian
> Waterford Institute of Technology
> http://library.wit.ie/
> T: ++353.51302838
> M: ++353.876693212
>