Developing Unique Study Room Reservation Systems

Room reservation systems are important in an increasingly collaborative library environment. This chapter explores two case studies of libraries experimenting with room-bound, electronic reservation kiosks. Teachers College, Columbia University built a native app to run on room-coded iPads, while Stony Brook University developed custom code to run Steelcase's RoomWizard system in a university environment. This chapter will discuss the particularities and challenges of both systems while addressing the solutions from other libraries discussed in the literature. Room reservation systems are a challenge for libraries of all types and many diverse solutions, from using vendor solutions to creating tools from scratch, have emerged in recent years. This chapter will explore two stories on that spectrum with attention to the potential applications and solutions emerging in this area.