Friday 27 July 2012

Using the new booking system

In theory, it should be quite easy to use, you can go to the library catalogue directly, and search for "book a PC" or "book a room". Searching for "Book a PC" will return 5 results:
Aungier St PCs1-9
Aungier St PCs 10-17
Aungier St PCs 18-24
Dame St PCs 1-7
Dame St PCS 8-14

Searching for "Book a Room"  will return two results:
Aungier St Study Rooms
Dame St Study Rooms.


Click the result that you want. In the detailed record, click on the 'Place booking' button.  If you are not logged in, you will be prompted to do so before you can continue.  Once you have logged in, you will see the booking planner (as with all subsequent images, click the image, to enlarge it):

  


It's not as scary as it looks!  On the left is a list of resources; PCs or study rooms.  Here, you can see Aungier St PCs 10-17, with PC10 selected as the default.  To the right is today's opening hours; the Aungier St library being open from 09.30 to 17.15.  The greyed out area represents the past and is unavailable for booking; only the white is available.  The red outline represents the current time available for booking.  To make a booking, click the 'New booking button'  and click the 30 minute box that corresponds to the time that you want to book.  Click the box next to it if you want to book for an hour and click OK. 



A confirmation message will appear after a successful booking.  Click the Continue button.  
Above, I've decided to book  PC14 at Aungier St from 15:30 to 16:30 on Friday 27th July.  I need to confirm that by clicking OK.  This is the confirmation message:  Take note of what you are booking as, unlike the existing system, there's no email confirmation sent.





You can change your mind and cancel the reservation by clicking the Cancel button.  If you decide at a later time yo cancel your booking, you can do so by clicking on 'Account' then the 'Reservations' tab, ticking the box next to your booking and clicking 'Cancel.


   

If you have any feedback, it will be passed on to the developers and hopefully will be used to improve the system.


 

Thursday 26 July 2012

New PC/Room Booking System

We automated the PC/Room Booking process two years ago, and all-in-all it's been a success.  The system however is not without its...foibles.  These foibles will make it more difficult to use the system this year, so from Monday 30/07 we're testing a new system, one that is integrated into the library catalogue. This system has several advantages, a couple of which are that you can use your library catalogue login and you can more easily see and manage your booking.  It's not going to be perfect, though to paraphrase thirteenth-century Chinese scholar Tai T'ung, were we to await perfection, our booking system would never be finished.  I'll follow this with some details on how to use the booking system.