Do you know what would be totally freakin' awesome?

Feb 26, 2009 00:29

Imagine that your library's reservation system worked more like Netflix. Which is to say, imagine that:
  • You could reserve literally hundreds of books at a time.
  • You could control where they were ranked in the queue, including being able to specify the ranking in the queue for any new reserves you made (which would insert there, and push whatever ( Read more... )

plans and schemes, the weapons i have, sekrit projekt scrinium, awesome!, gtd

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lokicarbis February 26 2009, 01:47:07 UTC
Let me address your points one by one:
* Books on the reserved list are still available - it's only the active reserves that are an issue.
* It might mean a few more reserves, but I doubt it would lead to that much greater a workload at the coalface end. Most of the work here is done by the computer or the client.
* I don't think they'd need more copies of popular books at all - one of the things about this system is that people would actually be prepared to wait longer, so long as they knew it was guaranteed. I think what you'd actually see is more action for rarely reserved books, because it's nothing but time to put them on what is basically a wish-list.
* I agree that there's more work to be done and money needed to set up the system - but most libraries upgrade their catalogue systems every few years in any case. It wouldn't cost that much more to roll these additional functions into an upgrade that was going to happen anyway. Or, you know, they could just use Koha.
* As I've said in some of the other comments, I have no problem with this being a paid service - most libraries already charge for reservations in any case.

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