Lead time for booking requests
We use the Reading Room functionality for our Rare Books and Special Collections items. These items are not on open shelves and are securely stored with access only available to staff to retrieve items. Currently there is no way to specify a lead time between making the booking and the start time of booking (ie. you can make a booking for an item at 10am, with a booking start time of 11am that same day). Staffing levels, item availability and item condition can sometimes mean that items are not available for use immediately (if at all), which creates problems for our clients – particularly if they have travelled some distance to specially view the item.
The ability to configure a lead time between time of making a booking and booking start time would ensure that we providing a better client experience for users of our Rare Books and Special Collections. It would give our staff time to check item condition and availability, and advise client of outcome of this before they arrive at our Library to view the item. This would mean that clients, many of whom will have travelled some distance to our Library, are guaranteed access when they visit us.
Caroline Serrano
shared this idea
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Cindy Bowen
commented
If it helps anyone: We do bookings on a date basis only (i.e., the patron selects only the dates, not the times) to help address this issue. That plus a 1-hour preview period has the effect of requiring patrons to book at least one day in advance. From what I can tell, the preview period does two things: controls when the request appears in the pick-from-shelf list, and operates as a buffer between bookings. So using a longer preview period may also work if you still want to allow patrons to choose date-and-time...
EDIT: The April 2024 release mucked this up for us; apparently how the Days resolution was working wasn't how it was intended to work, so they fixed it. We absolutely need this functionality now, because same-day requests were never what we wanted to happen. -
Timothy Jackson
commented
The SUNY system would like to see the ability to configure a booking lead time added to Alma's booking functionality. This is one of the reasons the majority of our campuses are unwilling to use the booking feature.