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Materials Booking

Coordinator:

Aaron Blazer, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.

Presenter:

Marianne Berger, College of DuPage

Web Site:

http://www.cod.edu/lrc/

Aaron Blazer presented an overview of the Materials Booking module using the information in the IUG conference notebook.

Full system integration is the main advantage noted. This includes:

• Equipment, rooms, materials, etc. can be booked because it is integrated with the circulation module and loan rules.
• Bookings and checkouts are handled much like circulation transactions and generate statistics in the circulation statistics. The Library “Days closed” table is consulted when booking items, but may be overridden.
• If something is already booked, it cannot be booked again.
• Delivery and pick-up slips can be printed.
• Bookings can specify one-time use, special events or regularly scheduled courses.

An Events database can be created to integrate all bookings for that activity. Events bookings can be retrieved as a group and updated globally. However, everything booked for an event has the same booking period, which is not always the ideal.

Booking Reserve Items

Audience members asked questions about booking reserve items and had comments as follows:

• When booking reserve items by staff, you need to be sure you have the item that is on reserve and not a stack copy.
• Booking items is different than other circulation activities because it does not book the item until you choose “Q> Quit and book item” from the menu.

Patron Self-Booking

This function is defined and enforced by library loan rules. Self-booking can be performed from OPAC, WebPAC or Course Reserves.

Aaron referred everyone to the INNOPAC Users Manual beginning with record #35889.

Marianne Berger began with an overview of the College of DuPage, their library, and the manual procedures used previously. They have been using the Materials Booking module since 1991. Materials Booking was purchased to ensure that the availability status of materials and equipment is known.

Special Policies

• Faculty can make booking requests by phone, in person and by email. They are asked to give two hours lead-time for an on-campus request and 24 hours lead-time for off-campus requests.
• Equipment and materials may be delivered to or picked-up by faculty.
• All staff is trained to do bookings to ensure that everything goes through the module and that staff can respond to questions.
• Inventory control is the main focus of bookings; i.e., the specific piece of equipment booked may not be the one delivered.
• Equipment doesn’t usually come back to the library between bookings but is often moved from room to room.
• Booking slips are printed twice a day: 3 p.m. for evening bookings and 9 p.m. for next day bookings.
• Most equipment deliveries are room deliveries and faculty members are not responsible. Equipment is checked out to the room (set-up as a patron) but materials are checked out to the faculty member. Faculty members sometimes move equipment from room to room leaving no history of who uses which equipment regularly. This causes some problems.
• Staff must clear bookings regularly because the equipment is not checked out with each move.

Equipment Listings

In order to book equipment, a brief record must be entered into the system. Records are suppressed. Alternative titles are added for commonly used names. The “volume” field is used to show items that need to be used together.

Questions and Answers

Q. What happens with time changes?

A. The system changes the time when the INNOPAC clock is reset.

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Q. How long does the booking on a Reserve item last?

A. The system holds the booking until the booking time expires.

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