Reservation system to eliminate wait time for students at Thomas Cooper Library
Study rooms in the Thomas Cooper Library can now be reserved online or via smart phone due to the addition of new software in the circulation department.
Instead of requesting a key to a study room in person and potentially waiting hours for a room to be vacated, students can now go to libcal.library.sc.edu and pick from five different types of study rooms, whose hourly availability is updated online. Rooms can be booked up to two weeks in advance.
The move to online booking reflects a system already in use by many other colleges and universities and offers a possible solution to many past student complaints.
“Nobody really liked the wait list,” Head of Circulation Tucker Taylor said. “There were many complaints about waiting, and it was hard to coordinate group studying. It’s hard to tell people, ‘Meet me at the library at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday’ when they don’t know where they’re going to be. Now, they’ll know for sure if they have a space.”
Students who reserve a study room will also no longer be required to vacate it within four hours unless another student books it when a reservation expires. This will take pressure off library staff who used to have to find lingering students and kick them out of a room, Taylor said.
“In the past, we didn’t have a way for making sure that people wouldn’t be hoarding the rooms in busy times,” Taylor said. “Now it is much simpler.”
The program was implemented during the summer term, when fewer students were using the library.
“We started looking at it seriously last year, but we don’t like to make changes during the school year because it could be confusing,” Taylor said. “We decided in May what we wanted, and we worked on it through the summer.”
While the system has not yet seen the test of a fall or spring final exam period, Taylor said it has been running smoothly. She said she expects study room use to rise with the simpler booking system.
Taylor was unsure of the total price tag Friday evening, but said the software was “extremely cost-effective” compared to other options the library explored.